Blue Mouths: The Infinite
Leila Farjami | Poetry
I grow a blue mouth—
blue lips, blue teeth,
a blade-thin tongue.
I go to the sea
that beckons me home—
a return to thirst’s origin.
The sun haloes
the clouds. A coronation?
A wedding? The water
glitters, frothy as light.
I stand on the sand,
watching heads
vanish. When I dip
my toes, it could be
my head beneath.
If not for the horizon,
I might cross.
Afraid of slipping
into the infinite.
No rooms. No doors.
No mirrors. Like my city
after the raid—
naked,
unmarked grave.
Leila Farjami is an Iranian-American poet and psychotherapist. Her debut poetry collection, Daughter of Salt, an Editor’s Selection at Trio House Press, is forthcoming in July 2026. She has received The Iowa Review Award in Poetry, The Cincinnati Review’s Schiff Award, and a PEN America Emerging Voices Fellowship, and was runner-up for the Auburn Witness Poetry Prize. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, The Iowa Review, Pleiades, Copper Nickel, AGNI, and Southeast Review, among many others. She lives in Los Angeles. Readers can learn more about her work at leilafarjami.com.