The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: Malak by Jenny Sadre-Orafai

Karaj

When I miss her, I open my popout map. Spilling my face
into Tehran streets, I hide in Laleh Park. Read street names
aloud like I’m reporting to someone. I pretend to see things
no one else can—who took the Peacock Throne, how
the burnt city fell. I say Karaj like I’m telling the future.

This selection comes from the collection Malak, available from Platypus Press. Order your copy here. Our curator for December is Tierney Bailey.

Jenny Sadre-Orafai is the author of Paper, Cotton, Leather and Malak. Her poetry has appeared in Cream City Review, Ninth Letter, The Cortland Review, Hotel Amerika, The Pinch, and other journals. Her prose has appeared in Los Angeles Review, The Rumpus, South Loop Review, Fourteen Hills, The Collagist, and other journals. She is co-founding editor of Josephine Quarterly and an Associate Professor of English at Kennesaw State University.

Tierney Bailey is a Libra, a lover of science fiction and poetry, and studies Korean in her spare time. Amongst her pursuits, Tierney is currently the production editor at Redivider Magazine and a copyeditor at Strange Horizons. As a graduate student at Emerson College, Tierney is studying publishing in the Writing and Publishing program. True to her Midwesterner roots, Tierney still smiles upon the slightest bit of eye contact, makes small talk in lines and elevators, and exclaims “ope!” with barely any provocation at all. If you can’t find her on a train somewhere between Providence and Boston, she can easily be found screaming into the void on Twitter as @ergotierney.