Poetry: Natasha Hakimi

Natasha Hakimi holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Boston University and B.A.’s in Spanish and English with a creative writing concentration from the University of California, Los Angeles. She has received several awards for creative writing, including the 2008 and 2010 May Merrill Miller Award for Poetry, the 2010 Ruth Brill Award for short fiction and the 2010 Falling Leaves Award. Most recently she was awarded the 2012 Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship and was a semifinalist for the Dzanc Books / Guernica International Literary Award. She has worked as an Editorial Assistant for AGNI, Los Angeles Magazine, and Truthdig.

 

IN USHUAIA

If you can find the southernmost
point in your mind, where the sun
strains to heat and commodores swarm
the beach, where crab takes on a softer
name and clay recovers everything,
there’s a place you’ve dreamt, a rounded
peak where instead of climb you can lie
on ancient tufts growing a centimeter
per lifetime, and fall asleep with your back
to the earth as the rain turns to snow before
your frosted eyes. If you arrive at that corner
of your memory that even Magellan failed
to discover, where guano makes the islands
shine and sea lions love three days
at a time, if you take the recondite trail
that culminates in a sea you never thought
you’d reach and dance with strangers
next to their SUV as if there is no end
to this thing, there, between the black
lagoon and lenga beech, you’ll see you
and me feeding crackers to a frozen beast.