crossing by Saba Pakdel

February 17, 2023
Poem title: crossing Poet name: Saba Pakdel Poem: home is a motion a wave, smoothing along a movement, expanding in time borders, the irony an imagined space between your documented body and I passing through one side stands, I the other. home is beyond your body’s past to an aching present unwilling to heal crossing invisible walls, I fall presenting a legalized skin, I fall shielding your birth name, I fall into the right category: a port a paper a pass. the frame voice asked impatiently, “where’s home?” hesitated I, wondering in the empty space of time a breath a sigh a millionth of the second, pinning down a temporary stay life. the ocean is crossing so is the wind from side to (the other) side home is a moment, I could’ve said the frame voice echoed over the wind coming across, “ma’am, where’s home?” poetry, I could’ve read which homes moments forever dis-placed memory re-locates renew your body’s paper every ten years, shedding illegality off your skin. the frame voice had no patience for me for mapping out a placeless past for translating my history a port a paper a pass. End of poem. Credits and bio: Copyright © Saba Pakdel This poem was highly commended in the Issue 4 of Loft Books, edited by Claire Cronin. Saba Pakdel is a poet, modernist scholar, and PhD student in the English department at University of Victoria. She completed her BA and MA in English language and literature in Iran. She earned her second MA in English at Simon Fraser University in 2021. In May 2022, Saba published her chapbook In-Between by above / ground press.