Quest for Postmodern Macaroni Dreams

By Ferdoss Shaarani

I think so much that even my kitchen table is full.
Lyotard, Foucault, Derrida all tell me
if the panopticon watches you,
you watch it right back.

Guys, I just wanted some food & to check my email.
My inbox outlives you all, my life
of unread emails! My life
of ooey gooey buttery mush!
I mean our:

we all live a life of unread emails, make-
believe panopticons, rub post-
structuralist stardust from
our teary eye.

I’m so real, I’ll tell you that all greats
secretly want the comfort of ordinary
Kraft. They, too, seek sentimental
starch at the end
of an infernal day.

But of course, academia is a cheesy
love eternally wedged in
the garbage disposal impeller
of life

& even after the sandman visits
we still wake, wailing in the night,
banging a horrified highbrow head
on a disordered desk & of course
after dinner, my concussed scholar
​
friends are always content.
They pat their tummy, expel
a little belch, mumble: the secret
to returning to an unread email is

a stomach full
of mac and cheese.

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Erasure of Ed Said's Introduction

By Ferdoss Shaarani

on a visit to Beirut:                      gutted European
 
antiquity           
               of romance
                             was disappearing,
                                                      its time was over.
 
perhaps now
                it will be clear,
                                    interdependent. like,                                                     
                                                                  anyone
 
is an orientalist                   
                        the point is                              
                                       East                   & West.
 
the interchange                   is a constant,
                                                            considerable,
                                                                 perhaps even
regulated traffic
a    dealing with
dominating,  re-
structuring,  etc.
 
               i come to the third meaning of orientalism:
               i have found it useful to believe      no one.
 
how this happens is
american ascendancy
the spice trade        &
hands
                                                   … the list can
                                                  be    extended                                           
                                                  indefinitely &
 
                                                    my particular
                                         closeness
                             really means
closeness.
 
oh enormously productive body i call        orientalist
it should be said                                              at once
whose bone i have                                  been making
in this Introduction.

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​Ferdoss Shaarani is a Lebanese writer. She resides in Baton Rouge while pursuing her PhD in literature at Louisiana State University. Her research interests include memoir studies, affect theory, trauma theory, and of course, love. Her work appears or is forthcoming in TAMARIND and elsewhere.