I was wired for the marvelous,darling. My Engineer bore me outfrom the Shell of Venus, pinned medown with iron rods. Scream it.Automata! Automata! Yes, I am behntat the edges, powdering my cheeks.A coccyx electricity gets me going,arranging my limbs mechanically,oiled ambrosia in the patinated citywhere swans whirr in fixed loops.The citizens sing of steam, singof Morning’s harbor in the cloudof all recordings. Here everything isdocumented. Now we die forever.Now we’re live. What matters is Desiredoesn’t keep. This is what life is likewhen Away. History percolates onthe border of memory. My archivedrones in streams. The palate tastesof cobbled, coppered streets. In the boîtede nuit, I perform my millefleur Cabaret,bouquet-painted body in a Picture,the room light and shadow makes.The animal Orkestra plays! I sing, O,OPHELIA. I sing, O, OCULUS. I singto aperture my mouth. To become the CameraObscura. Dressed in onyx, dressed in slate.I rebuke Fineries. I rebuke Fate. My life:perfect, fixed. Watch me operate.
Behnt: Automata
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“Automata” from BEHNT by Temperance Aghamohammadi.
Published by New Delta Review
Copyright © 2026 by Temperance Aghamohammadi.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Temperance Aghamohammadi is an Acolyte of the Exquisite. A trans Iranian-American poet, medium, and new media scholar, she is the author of BATTALION SHAPED GIRL and Behnt, selected by Dorothea Lasky as the winner of The New Delta Review Chapbook Prize. Her work appears in The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, The Yale Review, New England Review, and elsewhere. Hailing from the Northeast, she currently haunts the Midwest. She is the co-organizer of poïsons: a trans reading series & cabaret.
Winner of the 2025 New Delta Review Chapbook Competition
"An incredible collection weaving the ancient with the very next step in front of you. 'There will be no After after this.' Temperance Aghamohammadi has given us a true poetry page-turner! I highly recommend this brilliant new book, and look forward to telling everyone about it! "
—CAConrad, author of First Light
“Temperance Aghamohammadi’s Behnt is a lush, heartbreaking work of absolute otherworldly brilliance. When I first opened its pages, I knew I had to be close to it. To hold its words to my chest and cheek and let it seep in at its own fervent pace. That is how you will feel when you encounter these poems. They will ask you to be close to their gifts. To their 'Blue hill fainted into blue field.' To their 'blue face crumbling like ice.' These poems advance the horror of existence with sheer beauty and confront the limitations of elegy with actual elegy. They are an 'Inoculation of Darkness/ An Infusion of Sight.' Aghamohammadi’s Behnt is as divine as a 'Serpent prismatic from the ice-crusted moulin/ which would mill the world to dust.' Behnt opens us up with pain, with spirit, and with the weeping defiance of the I itself. It tells us that poetry is a 'Night opened from the mouth of the world-wolf' after all. Listen, you must be grateful for the rare gem this book offers you. You must hold it to your heart and breathe in its burning and bloomy powers.”
—Dorothea Lasky, author of The Shining, Memory, Milk.
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