Mojgani - Songs from under the river: a collection of poetry

Copyright Anis Mojgani 2013 No part of this book may be used or performed without written consent from the author, if living, except for critical articles or reviews. Mojgani, Anis.
1st edition.
ISBN: 978-1938912-24-5 Interior Layout by Lea C. Deschenes
Cover Designed by Anis Mojgani & Joshua Grieve
Author Photo by Alexis Mojgani
Cover Illustration and Interior Illustrations by Anis Mojgani
Proofread by Alex Kryger
Edited by Alexis Mojgani, Cristin OKeefe Aptowicz, and Derrick Brown
Type set in Bergamo from www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com Printed in Tennessee, USA Write Bloody Publishing
Austin, TX
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writebloody.com To contact the author, send an email to MADE IN THE USA For Jean Gill
and her 5th period Creative Writing Class,
for Marc Smith and this amazing thing he began,
for those of you who listened over the years
and for you reading this.
And for AM, age 18,
falling in love with poetry.
Im happy you did.S ONGS F ROM U NDER THE R IVERDo not weigh my eyes with pennies
let me steal the herons boat.
I will row upstream to the mouth of the river
to talk with the souls who gather there.
They will tell me songs of silver,
and I will sing them back to you. L ETTER TO THE R EADER 1995. New Orleans. The summer before I started college. I was reading an article about Poetry Slams.

I had started writing poems earlier that year due to a creative writing class I took the last year of high school. The teacher, Ms. Gill, opened me up to what poetry could mean and to all the doors inside of me it could unlock. Reading about the slam opened more of those doors. What I learned from the Slam is that poetry is not just for a small percentage of the population and that poetry shouldnt be dismissed by those who have never before connected to it. The Slam allowed for poetry that was written by anyone who had something in their heart to express and the willingness to share it.

And it was judged by whoever had ears opened wide enough to listen and say, Yes, that poem affected me, or, No, that poem did nothing for me. There is a beautiful thing in allowing an audience to voice their love for or rejection of a piece of art, all while giving artists of all types, talents, and skill the space and time to share their own emotions and beliefs. Many of the poems in this collection were written as I was first studying Slam and the poetry performed within it. They were written in college when I was exploring what it meant for me to write poetry with the desire to share my words aloud. I hesitate to use the term spoken word because I prefer the naming of a medium to the labeling of an instrumentation. I feel this would be similar to a musician who plays the banjo who when asked what he makes answers that he creates songs for the banjo rather than simply saying that he makes music.

I enjoyed making different kinds of art, and rather than narrowing my artistic outlets, I allowed anything inside me attempting to speak to find the appropriate medium by which to make itself heard. Sometimes that was through comics. Sometimes it was a painting. Sometimes it was a poem. And no matter what it was there was still different avenues within the medium itself. Some poems are content to sit in the wide expanse of a page.

While some poems ripple their bodies slightly off the papers surface and still others that breathe loudly behind your eyes and find their way to your throat. One of the things I love about poetry that is performed or shared aloud is the ethereality of it. I love that a product of creativity, while existing in the same body with which it was born, may move in different cloaks. That the cloaks change based on where the artist is in the moment he or she opens his or her mouth. Or what the space is in which they are performing. Or the type of audience that is there to receive the work.

The cloaks change due to the sounds in the room, the light of the day, what he or she ate for dinner for an infinite number of reasons. And because of these changing cloaks, the thing itself slightly changes. Thus every time it is shared, it becomes a unique experience not only for the audience but also for the artist and for the art itself. While sharing the same space, an audience and an artist use the art to engage in a conversation, the result of which is a completely new piece of work, both original and singular to that moment in space and time. The art is a ghost. A constant ghost, birthing and dying all the time.

It has been a long time since most of these poems had a place to rest their bodies. When I was in college, I started self-publishing my work in poetry chapbooks. I had been writing and performing my work regularly for a few years at the open mics in the poetry community of Savannah, GA. My friend Jon Reeves had been putting together chapbooks and suggested I put one out. So with his help, I put out Where Are You Moon?! in 2001. Between then and 2005, three more followed: The Ballad of Nicor Misgoni, Untitled, and TheBirthday Yard.

A number of the these poems were used when I first began competing in poetry slams and eventually became the backbones of my live shows: Shake the Dust , Galumpf deez nuts... , Direct Orders , and The Pledge , to name a few. There were other poems that never found there way into those early chapbooks, such as Here Am I and my poem about riding a bus and meeting a young boy named Quentin. I have been writing poetry now for 18 years. Some poems have been not so good, others pretty decent. Being 35 is very different than being 20 (or even than being 25 or 30 for that matter).

Its hard to remember when exactly, but I wrote Shake the Dust at some point around 22 years old. It is probably the most well-known and popular of my poems. It is one that seems to have resonated with people back when I wrote it, and, thankfully, still seems to resonate with people today. I created this piece when I was so much wetter behind the ears, and I still ask, Is this good? Does this work on a page? Should this line be changed, this stanza cut? Does anyone even care about reading the poetic rambling joyous frustration of a twenty-something college kid? But Im not sure how relevant it is to make the poetic sensibilities I had 15 years ago accountable to the ones I currently have. We move through many orchards throughout our life. There are so many orchards of so many trees, that we and those around us have planted.

The trees push through the earth to bear fruit. The earth is harder in some place, softer in others. Some of the fruit blossoms in spring, some of it falls in autumn. Some of the apples fall before they have sweetened, while with some peaches you cannot stop the juice from running down your face. Some of the trees grow majestically, while others break before their time. There are so many trees and so many orchards.

There are stories in all their trunks, hanging off every branch. And for those who have found solace and shade from anything I might have planted, I thank you. I hope you enjoy. Anis Mojgani C LOSER Come closer. Come into this. Come closer.

You are quite the beauty. If no one has ever told you this before know that right now. You are quite the beauty. There is joy in how your mouth dances with your teeth. Your mouth is a sign of how sacred your life truly is. So come into it.

Come closer. Know that whatever God prays to, He asked it to help Him make something of worth. He woke from His dreams, scraped the soil from the spaces inside Himself, made you, and was happy. You make the Lord happy. Come into this. Come closer.