Hopscotch

Abstract

Hopscotch Fatemeh Shams (bio) and Armen Davoudian (bio) Shoulder to shoulder with your absence,I play hopscotch on the long streets of Berlin,the chalk lines half erased by rain. One hop to where you are, far away.One hop to smudged memories of Faith Kindergarten in Mashhad.Another hop and I might reach him,I might see him,I might hug my father, still twenty-nineand about to be a father for the first time. I hop one square forward over the artificial borders,I hop, hop, hop three squares back to the seven-year-old girlwho darts from the tip of the white poplarlike the shadow of a frightened crow. And then, on the landing, a brief pause—one foot dreaming of going back,one foot stuck in the present,repeating the paradox of living nowin the roofless cube of memory. To play hopscotch on long streetsin the elsewhere of being thirty-eightis to walk with a pilgrim's gait in a childhood dream. [End Page 20] Fatemeh Shams fatemeh shams is the author of When They Broke Down the Door (Mage), translated by Dick Davis, and of the critical monograph A Revolution in Rhyme (Oxford UP). Her poetry has been featured in Poetry magazine, pbs NewsHour, and the Penguin Book of Feminist Writing. She teaches at the University of Pennsylvania. Armen Davoudian armen davoudian's poems and translations from Persian appear in Poetry magazine, The Hopkins Review, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. His chapbook, "Swan Song," won the 2020 Frost Place Competition. He grew up in Isfahan, Iran, and is currently the O'Connor Fellow in Poetry at Colgate University. Copyright © 2023 Fatemeh Shams and Armen Davoudian