Three Poems by Bänoo Zan

For Mohammad Nourizad¹ You hear my voice amidst dust and ashes and blood Don’t threaten us with executions killings burnings For years you’ve been killing us burning us For years we’ve been used to death blood fire For years we’ve been holding our death in our fists To plunder us you’ve had to kill us and burn us To topple you we’ve had to face death and fire So, kill us burn us But we rise like buds from the ashes to shove you into graves you’ve dug for yourselves You hear my voice amidst dust and ashes and blood We the scorched are where fear fears us We are so alive a thousand thousand deaths won’t bring us to our knees ¹ This poem is inspired by Mohammad Nourizad’s voice recorded inside Evin Prison that was released on January 28, 2026, in condemnation of the massacre of protesters on January 8 and 9 by the Islamic Republic. This message is addressed to the Islamic Republic officials and security and military apparatus.

Lie to me, my mirror! Among mirrorettes the painting crowns the sovereign the artist colours the subject Which one is my mirror? Which one my star? Here in absolute monarchy the sun rises over the shoulder of lion The minister aids the prince to ascend the throne and is murdered at the prince’s command The eye of mirror smiles at the blind narcissus of gaudy crystal lusters Glass-mirror breaks into thousands of small panes each the body of a heretic massacred by clergy, statesmen, princes, merchants military, nobility, professors, and students Every break broken Every metaphor a prism of glass petals silver gems of geometric bloom fracturing eighty-five permanent and temporary wives Each mirror a broken hymen by the phallic shah— shrunken by the Perfection of The Land— a marionette on a throne The mirror mosaic galaxy of glass stars a looking glass for the prince who excels at injustice The window is the absence of garden— mirror-coated— panegyric-turned-satire— When the painting is done a subject murders the shah Gold curtains invite the eye to architecture Lie to me, my mirror! Tell me the truth ² The poem responds to a painting, “The Mirror Hall,” by the Iranian realist painter Kamal al-Molk (1847-1940). Kamal al-Molk was a title bestowed upon the artist by the ruling monarch Naser al-Din Shah Qajar (1831-1896). The artwork immortalized the Mirror Hall located in the Golestan (Rose Garden) Palace, Tehran, Iran. It depicts the king in the hall, but the perspective renders the shah diminutive in contrast to the aggrandized Mirror Hall. The poet reflects on this (un)intentional irony in the context of the political and cultural practices of the times. Golestan (Rose Garden) Palace, Tehran, Iran, also the subject of a painting by Kamal al-Molk.

A seyyed— the Prophet’s descendant— he wore a fez— as a pious Muslim chanted the azan and spiritual supplications on the national radio— His pleas converted Muslims to Islam His deep voice and tremolos the purest praise of the divine in Persian His instrument his throat Like the arrow of Arash⁴ the Muezzin’s soul— would leave his body and touch the believers and deniers After the revolution he was accused of being in league with the kafir Radio archives were purged of his recordings He came to fear for his life petitioned ayatollahs for protection was jailed for a while Some time after his release in the holy Muslim month he was invited to a religious gathering Later a photo of his body was sent to newspapers— dismembered— with his tongue cut out— Young men brought into the fold by the likes of the muezzin— claimed responsibility Still later, the Sharia ruler who sentenced thousands of political prisoners to death wrote that he had ordered the execution The muezzin became a muezzin in a secular dictatorship and was martyred by fellow-Muslims in an Islamic Republic in the month of Ramadan Now he is in Heaven His chants transcending tongues for an audience of one— Allah ³ Seyyed Javad Zabihi (1931-1981) ⁴ In Iranian mythology, Arash is the heroic archer whose arrow determined the boundary between Iran and the enemy land Turan. Arash put his life in the arrow, and it travelled for days before it landed on the other side of the Oxus River on the bark of a walnut tree hundreds of miles away.