No Bodies       for Zahra Kazemi Salaam Zahra,               your face, your mind                             alive like Nose Mountain strong, pointed, eternal               I saw you on the firetower T.V.                             you were covered in a white shroud               Iranian mourners lamented                             & buried you. Amina Lawal was to be buried               to her neck                             & stoned to death her newborn, village crier               of adultery                             a free woman’s crime The baby’s father is out               of her picture                             and the bearded court’s After worldwide tremors               she is free.               Your body rises even in death               I read the newspaper                             and wonder who you were? We know               you were a photojournalist                             who lived inside refugee camps in the Middle East               You documented women                             living in misery in Iraq Afghanistan and Palestine               You were a passionate witness                             who photographed protestors outside an Iranian prison               We know                             the Iranian government arrested and beat you to death               We know                             you had migrated to Canada where your only son               has demanded your return                             but corruption haunts terrains and eyeballs fall               alongside rocky                             avalanches. Your face on the firetower T.V.               is a mountain, a glacier                             the stream’s bedrock How many other journalists               have disappeared                             in Iran, alongside meteors of the Milky Way?               How do we divine                             whether these women and men are alive or dead?               Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad wrote                             “the earth in elevation reaches repetition changes into tunnels               of connection”                             People will remember you even if your body               never                             returns.