A Wednesday Afternoon Math Class OR The Marshmallow Poem
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: July 22, 2000

Thoughts, like dormant clouds, cluster around my head.
The air is being slowly pushed away, my ideas are drifting with it.
Unable to think my mind has melted away into a soft white pool,
this pool crystallizes and the mind connection stops.
A permanent sugar sensation circles the room in waves,
I am floating in the boredom sea.

Backdrop Addresses Cowboy
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: December 13, 1999

Starspangled cowboy
sauntering out of the almost-
silly West, on your face
a porcelain grin,
tugging a papier-mâché cactus
on wheels behind you with a string

you are innocent as a bathtub
full of bullets

Your righteous eyes, your laconic
trigger-fingers
people the streets with villains:
as you move, the air in front of you
blossoms with targets

and you leave behind you a heroic
trail of desolation:
beer bottles
slaughtered by the side
of the rode, bird-
skulls bleaching in the sun.

I ought to be watching
from behind a cliff or a cardboard storefront
when shooting stars, hand clasped
in admiration,

but I am elsewhere

Then what about me

what about the I
confronting you on the border
you are always trying to cross?

I am the horizon
you ride towards, the thing you can never lasso

I am also what surrounds you:
my brain
scattered with your
tincans, bones, empty shells
the litter of your invasions

I am the space that you desecrate
as I pass though.

Margaret Atwood

Joy Sonnet in a Random Universe
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: December 4, 1999

Sometimes I’m happy: la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la. Tum ti tum. La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la. Hey nonny nonny. La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la. Vodo di o do. Poo Poo pi doo. La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la. Whack a doo. La la la la la la la. Sh-boom, sh-boom. La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la. Dum di dum. La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la. Tra la la. Tra la la la la la la la la la la. Yeah yeah yeah.

Helen Chasin