Katayoon Zandvakili was born in Tehran and now lives in Oakland, California. Her collection of poetry, Deer Table Legs, won the University of Georgia Press Contemporary Poetry Series prize in 1998; the book’s title poem won a Pushcart Prize in 2000. Zandvakili’s work has been widely published and anthologized. The piece excerpted here is from a novel in progress, titled In the Lap of the Gods: My Eight-&-a-Half-Month Marriage to an Impostor.