the first time i see my father
it is at the nosebleed dusk of his funeral
i travel 7,000 miles for a photograph
— his body’s a half-lit cathedral of bones
here chopin is a rosebud clutched between
the gondolier’s lips; an étude’s silk
around the guillotine of a transparent
valance. a tesserae of water-lilied notes
the final shell of a martyr’s death-wish
at the window across the street, a woman with her
body of murano glass — enters like an epiphany
her dress of floodtides, waves & waves
of Armenian lace; a photograph of Venice,
its bridges with their unhinged mandibles open
like a language as naked as this city of cemeteries
with its cobalt bottlenecks, quicksilver canals & all
of its music swaying between waiting & wilting
—
Scherezade Siobhan is an Indo-Roma writer, psychologist, and an interpreter of mirrors. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Queen Mob’s Teahouse, Fruita Pulp, Cordite Poetry Review, Black & BLUE, Winter Tangerine, The Nervous Breakdown, The Harpoon Review, DIAGRAM, Wasafiri, Literary Orphans, and elsewhere. She is the author of Bone Tongue (Thought Catalog Books) and Father, Husband (Salò Press).