Farnoosh Fathi’s “The Ball of the Bald,” (5) and (6)

The LARB Quarterly no. 45, “Submission,” presents two new poems by Farnoosh Fathi.

By Farnoosh FathiJuly 7, 2025

• LARB Lit

• Poetry

These poems are a preview of the LARB Quarterly, no. 45: Submission. Become a member for more fiction, essays, criticism, poetry, and art from this issue—plus the next four issues of the Quarterly in print.

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The Ball of the Bald (5)

Out of one green sleeve, another is lengthened. This goes on, can go on, eternally, until finally, green chokes out all spring and summer remains, and the dark green seems like a dark grin, fully matured in its apparent evil, full of shade for the contemplative, the prayerful. But now I want to really fly, I am ready to apparently leave my post, the post which has been godly, to which I have written and received all day, when there is yet another, as this busies you with what you imagine to be experiencing, a feeling, when actually something completely outsized to your feeling, is taking hold, and this is, still not it. Of course I am grateful that I have not lain down for these words, inconceivable, conceivable, words. Nor will lay down for my wish to fly, which is to say I will not weigh here too long what this flight means in terms of a hierarchy in relation to what precedes it—this non-flight—this writing with, still at the post, but I will heed the impulses of these thoughts, this impulse which uses my thoughts to move me along as I must be moved along to remain in truth. Now, fly. 

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The Ball of the Bald (6)

But my pea’s cap has nowhere to land. The final head has passed, heavy with prose, nearly decorated as the tomb. But my pea’s cap, around which I lay these first of final flowers in a ring, these are white, from the nipple. Something is sprayed, airbrushed in, a long table whose skirts are flouncing as the long legs—the sum of the legs beneath them, if counted out in one length—shift and countershaft the weight of their sitting among themselves. The table oval, that in the final hour has all the silverware gathered to one end, like a centipede with itself pen running on all sides, noon, midnight, time, at the head. Now I need more than the pea. I need the feast of the bald on which birds are offered. Not other birds! Those pencils are sharp, their nipples, in them milk is flowing backwards, all worms are feeding in fine blowing backwards, inwards, towards and of its own being, like hair or cyclamen’s petals, permanently flown back from the face.

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Featured image: Ben Benn. Still Life, 1941. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of New York City W. P. A., 1943 (43.47.7). CC0, metmuseum.org. Accessed July 1, 2025. Image has been cropped.