Lia Purpura, Parasol Mushroom (detail), featured in AGNI 102
My Mother Becomes a Pond
Her care inventory: gloves, sanitizers,
body powder, wipes, lotion, bedpan.
Today I order a lavender spray.
The carpet soaked in urine,
her diaper hanging loose—
swollen, sagged.
A drop trickles down her thigh
and wets her ankle as she is eased into bed,
a walker at her side,
the caregiver’s arms
under hers.
Her bruised hand
clutches the bed rail.
She turns—no longer certain how—
lies back, the whites of her eyes
gray puddles, her lips parted,
dripping saliva.
She babbles: Aab. Aab. Aab.
All day
my mother becomes a pond,
then a rivulet, dew
thinning to mist.
There, in that world,
a daughter mourns—
carries rocks
across the river,
blood on her heels.
There, fish circle
her toes.
There, the water
softens into milk.
————
Aab: Water, in Persian.
Leila Farjami
Leila Farjami, an Iranian-American poet, translator, and psychotherapist, is the author of Daughter of Salt (Trio House Press, 2026). Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, AGNI, The Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, Pleiades, and elsewhere. She has received a Pushcart Prize, the Iowa Review Award in Poetry, The Cincinnati Review’s Schiff Award, and a PEN America Emerging Voices Fellowship. She lives in Los Angeles. More at leilafarjami.com and on Instagram @leila_poetry. (updated 10/2026)