Closer Than Your Jugular

by Khashayar Mohammadi

I began as a novice
to a city
long ago mastered
by the writer’s eventual plunge
into blindness
the instinct to pub-crawl
came from a different breed
and the black tome of the night
painstakingly written to be fed
as an offering to the lake
as if bread crumbs to ducks
whose soft glide
is the unfolding
of the universe

a betrayal

gods
idols
gods
stone
God: the parenthetical

KHASHAYAR MOHAMMADI

is a queer, Iranian born, Toronto- based poet, writer, and translator. They were short-listed for the 2021 Austin Clarke Prize in Literary Excellence (poetry), they are the winner of the 2021 Vallum Poetry Award, and the author of three poetry chapbooks and two translated poetry chapbooks. Their debut poetry collection Me, You, Then Snow is out with Gordon Hill Press. Their second book, WJD, is forthcoming in a double volume with the translation of Saeed Tavanaee’s The OceanDweller from Gordon Hill Press in Fall 2022. Their collaborative poetry manuscript with poet Klara Du Plessis is forthcoming with Palimpsest Press in Fall 2023.