POETRY October 1, 2025

How Do You Say

the shopkeeper’s son is handsome     & he knows it     he asks “Do you speak Farsi?”

i flirt in English   i float in the space between us   i say “No, I don’t speak Farsi”

i start stopping   by the market   more often   some days   i boldly buy ingredients

sabzi    limoo    bags of saffron    small enough    to hold     what Farsi

i do know   pricey & plastic-wrapped   pushed to the back of my pantry

red threads   i lack the confidence   to transmute into gold  still packaged in Farsi

most days   i order at the counter   & stumble in the darkness   clotted beneath

my tongue   it shudders in the light   when i try to speak    Farsi

i can name the food    simmering on the steam table   but i only know how to ask 

to be filled   in English   desire simmering inside me   un-foreign as Farsi

the shopkeeper likes me       despite       his son does too       because

we talk about his school   my students   his girlfriend   who can’t speak Farsi

white like our mothers   married to our Persian fathers   but mine refused

to teach me   his language   despite my mother’s insistence   he insisted “Farsi

is a useless language”   useless   like a dry tongue?   useless   like an empty mouth?

the shopkeeper’s son    saves his name in my phone    in Farsi

i can’t do the same   jaz comes from jasmine   cleaved from an American bone

we both know   what he means   when he says   “I can teach you   a little Farsi”

Jaz Sufi (she/hers) is a queer Iranian-American poet and arts educator. Her work has been published or is upcoming in Best New Poets, Best of the Net, AGNI, Black Warrior Review, Muzzle, and elsewhere. She is a National Poetry Slam finalist and has received fellowships from Kundiman, The Watering Hole, and New York University. She is the current Poet Laureate of San Ramon on occupied Ohlone land, where she lives with her dog, Apollo.
Social Media:
Instagram and X: @calamityjaz
Facebook: Jasmine Wilkerson Sufi