Nima Kian

BODY GUEST

I.

Body, I see you walk away.

Gravel streets recognize

my absence in your soles.

Did you learn a new language or did I

forget the way we talked to each other?

You grew quiet like a vessel, drained.

II.

We cannot emigrate out of skin

that holds us together.

Another language changed us

from the inside. We are

foreigners in our self.

I understand that

our body-guest rearranges our living

arrangement, removes myelin

sheathing you draped

around axons of our brain and spinal cord.

Your reactions—what feel like multiple

tiny legs running on my skin,

electric water pouches under my feet,

crumpled fingers like deformed paper—

alarm me.

III.

We possess a personal painter

who resides throughout our nervous system.

You and I, plus one whose abstract arts—

little white lines, narrow, scattered—

weaken us.

A new language takes time.

Fluency rescues.    

Nima Kian lives in Lincoln, NE, where he teaches writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in, Saint Mary's Magazine, Black Lantern Publishing, Mascara Literary Review, Mythic Delirium, Stone Highway Review, Strange Horizons, Blast Furnace, among others.