They called me today to say she has lost six pounds since last week. Mom has been refusing to eat for a while now. I visited her on Sunday. She looked radiant in her blue sweater, and long pearl necklace, wrapped in a wool blanket. Outside, it was 102 degrees.
Azarin Sadegh is an Iranian-American writer. Her work has appeared in Place Art Magazine, Scoundrel Time, LA Review of Books, and various anthologies.
The old man’s smell in her palm
Memory spread the pang of last lovemaking
Dark rain pecked the windows; dark sun shone; the coffee mug held her hands
New Yorkers’ podcast still on; it kept rewinding
Yet she couldn’t stay in this repetition of life
When they were both evaporating.
Azarin Sadegh, a 2011 PEN America Emerging Voices fellow, a LARB contributor, and a former student of the late Les Plesko, is working on a new novel.
Waiting for the bombers, I turned off the light and the room floated in obscurity. We listened to the buzz of thirsty mosquitoes, the fall of spiders, and the hiss of the melting candles.
The dust whispered in the air and we went deaf, listening to the moon, shining cold.
Azarin Sadegh, a 2011 PEN USA Emerging Voices fellow, and a former student of the late Les Plesko, is working on her 100,000 word novel.
A witch stole our only lemon tree from the backyard. She rode on it, shoving the last ripe lemon into her toothless mouth.
A frightening, nonsensical sense of helplessness woke me up.
Auntie hovered over me and I remembered that real life is scarier than the witches of our dreams.
Azarin Sadegh, a former student of the late Les Plesko, is working on her 125,000 word novel, The Suicide Note.