Shakiba Hashemi

CANOPY OF CLOUDS

“No mother should bury her child,”

my great-aunt sobbed at the cemetery

that August morning. Her shivering body

hunched over the grave, and she scattered

rose petals like blood spatter

in a murder scene. Her son was only seventeen

when he went to war. He died

before he could kiss a girl on the lips

and build a life, before he could father

his unborn kids. “Why God, why?” she wailed

and raised her fist. Summer breeze whispered

around the headstones and moaned

in the cypress trees. The canopy of clouds

cast a shadow on the morbid ground

and the air smelled like rosewater, tears

and ghosts of what could have been.

Shakiba Hashemi is an Iranian-American poet, painter and teacher living in Southern California. She is a bilingual poet, and writes in English and Farsi. She holds a BFA in Drawing and Painting from Laguna College of Art and Design. She is a winner of 2023 Best of the Net Award and Philadelphia Stories Editor's Choice Award. She is the author of the chapbook "Murmur" published by Word Poetry. She has been nominated for Pushcart Prize and her work has appeared in The New York Quarterly, Atlanta Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, The Indianapolis Review, The Summerset Review, Breakwater Review and elswhere. Her poem "The Call to Prayer" is forthcoming in the anthology Without a Doubt from the New York Quarterly, and her artwork is the cover of the anthology... Full Profile