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    The Feather Room
    The Feather Room
    The Feather Room
    Ebook152 pages1 hour

    The Feather Room

    By Anis Mojgani

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    About this ebook

    Science, birds, Billy the Kid, and lots of feathers surround The Feather Room, Anis Mojgani’s follow up to his Pushcart-nominated work, Over the Anvil We Stretch. In The Feather Room, Mojgani further explores storytelling in poetic form while traveling farther down the path of magic realism, endowing his tales with a greater sense of fantasy and brightness. The work recounts loss and heartbreak while discovering lightness and beauty on the other side. Throughout the book, Mojgani opens tree trunks to reveal chandeliers. He leads us through the rooms inside himself, using poems to part curtains and paint walls. He is lifting windows to let the fantasy indoors.

    Anis Mojgani, Andrea Gibson, you and other young poets of their talent are the future of American poetry and frankly, that fills me with joy! --Thomas Lux, Guggenheim Fellow & recipient of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for his book Split Horizons

    Mojgani is not your typical national poetry slam champion...The playfulness, startling originality, and lyric optimism are all gravy. He's simply the best there is right now. -Taylor Mali, “The Last Time As We Are"

    Anis shook the dust off me and everyone else in the audience with the beauty of his words. -Saul Williams, “Said the Shotgun to the Headâ€
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWrite Bloody Publishing
    Release dateOct 1, 2018
    ISBN9781935904755
    The Feather Room

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      Book preview

      The Feather Room - Anis Mojgani

      Front Cover

      Title Page

      The Feather Room

      a collection of poetry

      by Anis Mojgani

      Write Bloody Publishing

      America’s Independent Press

      Long Beach, CA

      writebloody.com

      Copyright Page

      Copyright © Anis Mojgani 2011

      No part of this book may be used or performed without written consent from the author, if living, except for critical articles or reviews.

      Mojgani, Anis.

      1st edition.

      ISBN: 978-1-935904-75-5

      Interior Layout by Lea C. Deschenes

      Cover Designed by Joshua Grieve

      Author Photo by Jeremy Okai Davis

      Cover Illustration and Interior Illustrations by Anis Mojgani

      Proofread by Sarah Kay

      Edited by Derrick Brown, Courtney Olsen, Alexis Davis, Jake Danna and Gabrielle Dunkley

      Type set in Helvetica by Linotype, Aller and Bergamo: www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com

      Also by Anis Mojgani: Over the Anvil We Stretch

      Special thanks to Lightning Bolt Donor, Weston Renoud

      Printed in Tennessee, USA

      Write Bloody Publishing

      Long Beach, CA

      Support Independent Presses

      writebloody.com

      To contact the author, send an email to writebloody@gmail.com

      Prologue

      If there is a room inside of me

      with your name written in it

      the language it is written in is a lovely one.

      One of figs and birds

      and beaches the color of butter.

      The walls blue, and at least one of them

      made from nothing but windows

      Another has shelves of speckled stones.

      The light pours across the floors

      and the trees outside

      burn with song.

      The Feather Room

      Dedication

      for whom I met inside there

      Introduction

      A young man traveling came upon a farm in the night time and stopped to see if he could stay the evening. The farmer that lived there welcomed him in and the young man saw that there were three doors in the living room: a yellow one of wood, a red one of stone, and the third made of blue glass. The farmer said yes the man could sleep on the couch but no matter what he might hear, the man would not open any of the three doors. The young man agreed and lay down to sleep. In the middle of the night he woke to some sound coming from behind the first door. Forgetting the farmer’s warning the young man opened the door. Sitting amongst piles of bicycle parts was a beautiful young girl singing and polishing a pair of handlebars. She looked up and motioned for him to join her. He began to polish her arms and immediately he fell asleep. The young man woke to the farmer shaking him and asked the farmer what had happened to the girl. The farmer said that whatever was in that room was now gone and as punishment the young man would have to help him on the farm for the day.

      That night the farmer again gave the young man the couch to sleep on and again warned him against opening the doors. Once more the young man was awakened in the night by a sound. He opened up the door of red stone and saw a room filled with birds screeching, every one of them featherless. At the far wall was an old man crying, opening a window. The old man kept picking the birds up and setting them on the sill, as if pushing the creatures out to fly. But all they did was sit there while the old man wept. The young man walked to the old man, who put a featherless bird in the young man’s hand and immediately the young man fell asleep. He woke again to the farmer shaking him. He asked what had happened to all the birds and to the old man. The farmer said that whatever was in that room was now gone, and that the young man would have to once more help him on the farm.

      That night the farmer again warned the man. And again the young man awoke in the middle of the night. This time though there was only silence. The young man stood in front of the door of blue glass. It was like water except nothing could be seen through it. The silence in the air was so heavy the door seemed to throb. As if all that was silent was on the other side of it. The young man again could not resist and opened the door to walk through. In the morning when the farmer woke him on the floor of the third room he asked the farmer, What are these rooms? The farmer looked at him and said, The first room is the room of where you were, the girl singing was someone you once loved. The second room is the room of where you are, the old man was your sadness holding on to something long gone and broke. And the third room is where you are going. What did you see in there?

      The young man said, Feathers. There was nothing in the room but feathers.

      Epigraphs

      We named our children Sweetbelly and Stickylove

      and when they were outside, we kept them in fruit trees

      and when they were inside we kept them in our arms.

      —A. Davis

      Some destinations are

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