• Poems

    Sarwa Azeez: “Aftermath”

    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.

  • Poems

    Sarwa Azeez: “Outliving the Day”

    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.