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

Aftermath

Each time he finishes spraying,
picking, or pruning,
he gazes out over the vineyard
as if the buried might rise again.

Before resettlement,
my dad drove a shovel truck
the engine’s growl
tearing through the grey air
along mountain slopes.
He carved roads
that sometimes led
to the darkest destinations.
On his way to work,
he’d pass bodies in uniform –
piles of them
and had to bury them,
war after war
after war.
Now, forty summers on,
dad stands among the vines,
listening for voices
we can never hear.

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.