Falling, by Nooshin Ghanbari

Starry Night, by Vincent Van Gogh (Netherlands) 1889.

Falling

When you’re lost under the milky streetlights
of Jan Pieter Heijestraat

           & all you can feel is a stranger’s gaze
lingering one second too long,     Amerikaans,

it feels like falling into the varicose veins
of Van Gogh’s blue-tinged body,     succumbing to

The Harvest’s molten fields,
           Starry Night’s angry skies.

There’s something about the movement
of his brushes that is like the movement of the city –

something unforgiving, deafening.
But even Van Gogh couldn’t paint

           the ever-present ringing of bells,
clinging to canal boats & their windows

like a stranger’s golden eyes,
                          more awake than alive.

Nooshin Ghanbari
​
Nooshin Ghanbari is a recent graduate of the University of Texas at Austin with degrees in English and Plan II Honors. While at university, Nooshin was awarded the Board of Regents’ Outstanding Student Award in Arts and Humanities for excellence in poetry, the Ellen Engler Burks Memorial Scholarship for Creative Writing, and the James F. Parker Prize in Poetry. Her work can be found in WILDNESS, Apricity Magazine, Vagabond City Literary Journal, Skylark Review, and elsewhere both nationally and internationally. Nooshin currently lives in Austin, Texas, where she works as an AmeriCorps literacy tutor in low-income elementary schools.

Website: https://nooshinghanbari.wordpress.com