NILOOFAR

Blossom
upon desire’s exit
wound.

[]

The future
bifurcates —
one part roots,
one germinates a spar
of crocuses.

[]

Come, tell again
the differences of the dead:
in earth, little damp fossils.

[]

Streaming. Rivering.
A dire wolf lumbers
out of fog.


Pines into vision.

[]

With bewitched
silver shears
I sever
fate’s stamen
from its pollinating
bee.

—

From BATTALION SHAPED GIRL–published by Discount Guillotine.

—

Temperance Aghamohammadi is an Acolyte of the Exquisite. A trans Iranian-American poet, medium, and critic, she is the author of BATTALION SHAPED GIRL (DISCOUNT GUILLOTINE, 2025) and Behnt (New Delta Review, forthcoming), selected by Dorothea Lasky as the winner of The New Delta Review Chapbook Prize. Her work elsewhere appears in The Kenyon Review, The Yale Review, New England Review, Fairy Tale Review, and elsewhere. She is an associate editor at RHINO Poetry and was the Claudia Emerson Scholar at the 2025 Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Hailing from the Northeast, she currently haunts the Midwest.