Editor’s Note: To mark Kurdish History Month, we’ll be sharing poems by Kurdish poet, translator, and Fulbright scholar Sarwa Azeez—one poem each week throughout March. Our thanks to Sarwa for sending her work.

Sarwa Azeez

Outliving the Day

Some days stretch so far
I feel I have outlived
a clock bloated with revolutions and genocides.

My insomnia stands like a mountain
from which killed dreams
bleed into the sky.
I keep counting
until minutes turn to ghosts,
until my back becomes a mother’s back,
bent around her child,
limbs loose and pendulous,
head fallen backward
under the weight of war.
Which world
has he crossed into now
whether he is sheltered,
given food and toys,
or told, once again,
he does not belong
to this life.

Sarwa Azeez is a Kurdish poet, translator, and Fulbright scholar with an MA in English Literature at Leicester University and an MFA from Nebraska-Lincoln University. She is a Pushcart prize nominee and her debut poetry collection, Remote, was published in the UK by 4Word in 2019. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications including Parentheses Journal, Collateral Journal, the other side of hope, Genocide Studies and Prevention Journal, Feral Journal, and elsewhere.