From the magazine:غيابٌ مبكر
By Nasser Rabah
،لم يكن الوقتُ كافياً لتعلّمِ العزف مثل خطاكِ وهي تصعدُ درجَ البيت
،أو الغناءِ المقفى وأنت تغسلين ا…
،أو الغناءِ المقفى وأنت تغسلين ا…
Explore Poems: Islam
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From the magazine:
From the magazine:Early Absence
By Nasser RabahTranslated By Ammiel Alcalay, Emna Zghal & Khaled al-HilliNot enough time to learn how to play an instrument that
sounds like your steps climbing the stairs at…- By BazeedIn the hiding
hour of autophagy
ghosts hang out all day and talk to us.
An archival haunting demanding tribute:
half a lime for breakfast every day.
بشرٌ يئنّونَ من الألمِ
human voices keening in pain
تُشعلُ أجسادَهُمَ النارُ
their bodies, consumed by fire
light up the... From the magazine:
Allah Castles
By Faisal Mohyuddinare what my son,
with a 5-year-old’s
sweetness, calls every
house of worship,
is how I can tell
he is a traveler too.
O, how many times
I’ve performed salah
in empty churches,
whispered ameen
at mass, made wudu
before holding
the Torah or the
Guru Granth Sahib,
nodded reverently
at the statue of Ganesh
in...- By Noor NagaThis is a practical religion there is a prayer at dawn (beginning when it is light enough outside for a black thread to be distinguishable from a white thread and ending at sunrise) there...
- By Mo H. SaidiI
My father was tall, plump, old and cruel.
When he was late returning home, we’d
joke that he’d been taken to the morgue.
A story teller, he often would say,... - By Mo H. SaidiMother recited the Koran every night.
None of us knew what those words meant.
She persuaded us to pray every day.
She would frighten us,
“You’ll go to Hell otherwise.”
Near the mosque I was born.
Reciting aloud the muezzin kept us
awake all night. Mother said,... From the magazine:
Anima Writes a Letter Home
By Nabina DasDear mother and father and old and young people of my home. Dear pets and weeds and flowers and footfalls. I write to you in a script speckled with time. I write to the language of a poet and many...From the magazine:
an introduction
By Sheena Raza Faisalmy god wakes up with bed head
and sticky fingers, doesn’t
want to go into work today
my god forgets to do the dishes
lets all the houseplants die
my god teenages
built this earth on Friday night
and tires of it on Sunday morning
my god commands
a...From the magazine:
Psalm
By AdonisTranslated By Kareem James Abu-Zeid & Ivan EubanksI amuse myself with my country.
I glimpse its future approaching on the eyelashes of an ostrich, I toy with its history and its days, I strike it with stones and thunderbolts. I extinguish its lamps and light its windows, and...From the magazine:
Ghazal
By Edil Hassanit is dark here & still you have al nur at your neck when fajr does not come
my body is the color of mourning / not dua or dawah / so I say let the day come
my body is fajr...From the magazine:
Ode to Dalya’s Bald Spot
By Angel Nafismy sister wraps the throw
around herself on the small
cream loveseat & i know
for sure that she is not
a speck of dirt on a pill.
she coughs & sniffs up all
the lucky air in the room
into her excellent nostrils,
which are endless
holy wells...From the magazine:
washee/was she
By Sahar Muradishe was washee i told her you are
like your motherland a wilderness
needs a belt laid down two white
hotel towels took her into the tub to
wudu the boys out of her mouth pointed
her nipples toward qibla wiped clean
her intention to perform...From the magazine:
Unmotioning
By Aria AberEspecially in line for the food bank,
my mother radiated grace. Talked
a machinery of Principles. Elm trees
and their dresses of urine, her small mouth
always chiding, don’t speak to a man of that kind.
This daily commitment to life felt laborious, haram.
Expendable it...From the magazine:
A woman is never still
By Afshan ShafiAt one time,
if my nails had been painted
this shade of rose-foam in Kabul
they would have rammed
out the frosted shell
like the tarp off
a bud’s wet belly,
they would have gouged out
each shining beast,
viscera still shiny,
each glittering pore
still insane
with breath
The pain is meant
to...From the magazine:
Small Talk
By Momtaza Mehriyou michelangelo’s crouching boy/you d’angelo’s purr/you dead currency/you dead presidents/you a stick of incense/you a stick-up artist/you haraami/you the hum of a lifetime basined in my lap/count our tallies of loss backward for me/run to the bank & translate it...From the magazine:
Glory Be to the Gang Gang Gang
By Momtaza MehriIn praise of all that is honest, call upon the acrylic tips
and make a minaret out of a middle finger, gold-dipped
and counting. In the name of Filet-O-Fish, pink lemonade,
the sweat on an upper lip, the backing swell and ache
of Abdul...- By Anjuli Fatima Raza KolbIn a seaside desert port
that wasn’t yet a city
our grandfather built a wide house
and called it gulistan
There were no roses there
just the new government
four children that would be seven and a porch
where he stitched shoes and mixed paste
for paper...