These “big themes” rest quietly within Soraya Shalforoosh’s uniquely charming poems, where office friendships, births, marriages, and deaths take place in the still-thrilling city and in this poet’s always clear, always loving, constantly surprised and surprising imagination. Bracing as any New York novel, these poems sing the right-here, right-now.
—Kathleen Ossip

The suddenness with which her poems seem to come into being—dashed on the go, à la the O’Hara lunch poem—can be exhilarating.
—David Trinidad

“Will you take me as your hostage, I can arrange it” Tweet

“Lynne will not contribute to the office lotto pool / She needs to save her singles for strippers” Tweet

Ocean

Mom. When I think of you I usually think of the stars, sky, that you’re
“out there” somewhere. And this week when drifting to sleep, I thought
of the ocean instead, that I would meet you,
again in the ocean tides, that we would rise up and down together,
sunlight would shine over us, whether we are amoebas, or fish darting
through coral, maybe dolphins? That we would be splashing, or maybe
in splashes, or splashes themselves—maybe we’d be the Ocean and
embrace all limbs with a foam that sticks, a foam that kisses sand,
seashells that are picked over by birds and maybe the sound of little
pink shells rattling on the surf is your call.

It is raining on this version of earth; I accidentally stepped into a sooty
puddle.

I’ll take what I can get.

Dad Was Home for Weeks Recovering

Sitting in the recliner, you seemed so much smaller, watching game
shows with spinning wheels and jumping moms with bad perms. You
agreed to be Charlie as in Charlie’s Angels as we ran around the rooms.
I was Sabrina, of course. Kim was Kelly. With our walkie-talkies and
imaginary guns we were going after a bad guy.

Was it 1979 or 1980 when two men held you upside down in a bar
while the third punched. “Fucking Iranian.” Broken ribs, broken
everything but spirit. How did you do it Dad? Not get bitter?

Buy This Version of Earth (2014) online via our secure payment service, Paypal:
ISBN: 9780989329637