I Am A Miniaturist

Try to look. Just try and see.
- Charlotte Delbo

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Eye to I

How long does it take to be at peace
with living framed in my own locket
to see small, make and love small things?
A moment, an instant?
Running-hands-through-hair time?
Bread-dough-rising time?
How long?

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Mend scratches on the heart,
stitch mirror sequins on baby hats,
count tiny madrone bell flowers,
and take home the peeling bark
to boil, write alphabets on bay leaves
and love letters on postcards,
make an owl that fits on a thumb
and collect jacaranda seeds and seashells,
enter narrow backdoors to kitchens,
draw faces the size of postage stamps
with tiny circles and dashes
revealing and concealing again;
their weight has nothing to do with scale.

of such things. cover

of such things.

Esther Kamkar
Ziba Press, 2018

Esther Kamkar photo and insignia

About Esther | Ziba Press

Harvesting Questions

‍Writing my bio is a hard thing to do. The short version is: What was, is over with and what is, the poems and other works will tell us. The hardest is not asking: What was it that is over with? My work belongs to salvage art inventory, with forgotten damaged works of art in warehouses suddenly becoming valueless no longer art, legally worthless. Does my work truly tell us what is? Mostly it is freed from the market value without the drudgery of usefulness. Am I an artist from the Republic of Mermaids?

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Esther Kamkar

Esther Kamkar was born in Tehran, Iran and lived in Jerusalem for seven years before emigrating to the United States. She has been a poet and artist for most of her life. She has lived in Palo Alto, California for many years and published three books of her poetry through her own imprint Ziba Press. Her poems have also appeared in anthologies and literary journals in the United States and abroad. To discover more about Esther, explore this website.

Castle encaustic painting

A poem with a museum
heart, its wings filled
with collections
of paper and clay
primeval.

Spot drawing