Sheema Live!

My courageous friend Sheema Kalbasi read poetry at Cal Poly . She has authored two collections of poems, Echoes in Exile in English, and Sangsar (Stoning) in Persian. Her verses run on the thin edge between a subtle series of opposites. Resignation and hope, sorrow and joy, loneliness and communion, loss and conquest, desire and aversion, war and peace: all these confront each other, repel each other but never separate completely, yet interlace weaving the arduous story of the poet.

Watch her interview with Pars Times; Sheema live!

"I have to change myself first before I can change the world".--Sheema Kalbasi

...
and I tore loose the chains of captivity
only to fall once more into bondage
when I was raped by a Mongol
married a Jew
gave birth to a Muslim
watched the child convert to Buddhism
watched the child marry a Bahai
live as a Christian
die as a Hindu

I am a woman
I am the river
I am the sky
I am the clouded covered trees upon the mountain
I am the fertile earth whose song the plants drink deep
I am the long line of tribes
I am the long line of faiths

Don't try to convert me
into something I am not
for I am already all
that humanity will ever be

--Sheema Kalbasi