Saba Vasefi is a poet, a documentary filmmaker and human rights activist. She was a lecturer in Tehran, Shahid Beheshti University. She became a member of the Committee of Human Rights Reporters. She also worked as a reporter for the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. She was twice a judge for the Sedigheh Dolatabadi Book Prize for best literature on women’s issues. She was expelled from the University after 4 years of teaching due to her activism. Her documentary film about child execution in Iran ”Don’t Bury My Heart” has been screened for the BBC, United Nation, Amnesty International, The Copenhagen International Film Festival, SOAS university, University of Oslo, Dendy Opera Quays cinema and Seen & Heard Film Festival. She has published poems, research papers, articles, reports, interviews and multimedia about executions, censorship, and women and children’s rights. Her multimedia piece, “Shirin, A Soloist in the Silence Room” was screened in Geneva for the UN. She has also had work published in the anthology “Confronting the Clash: The Suppressed Voices of Iran. She was director of First Sydney International Women’s Poetry Festival (Woman Scream). Currently; she is completing a postgraduate degree in documentary at The Australian Film TV and Radio School (AFTRS).
Slap Fingerprints
Translated by Sheema Kalbasi
It is not without reason
that I no longer miss
Like the tea stirred in the cup
Haze dances around my temple
flock by flock
The Pimp
And the shameless
Scream their pain loud
It is still I
who expands like blood from
collarbone to
legs
But not
ripened enough to be picked from
the branch
The more the wheel turns around
the more confused I become
Like a reptile crawling handless and
Footless
Tell me where in this rotten hole I
should give birth to my daughter
So that the titmice paint her dress
Maroon
With ruby grapes
Now that in the long famine
Queues
I swallow rationed moldy bread
Where on earth should I entrust
Her
lest my imprisonment arrest the
motion of the Heaven
In the long term prison of life
Where is safe
For this out of circle baby
Who goes round and round
To find a face
Branded with slap fingerprints