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Ladan Osman

Silhouette

By Ladan Osman I enter: carpet, curtains,
large, framed pictures of robed white men,
a glassy glare over a forehead, below the voice box,
students in bland shades.
I don’t belong, the luxury of thinking,
the wealth of talking about thought,
privilege of ease among important people.
Hazem Fahmy

The Committed

By Hazem Fahmy When I say “a Free Palestine in our lifetime” I mean it
is your moral duty to believe the last shekel has already been printed,
its destiny a glass frame in a museum next to a dollar,
S. J. Ghaus

There Is Only One World, This One

By S. J. Ghaus Nearby a spring lamb wobbles
like a song on its first feet, while
somewhere in the same field a lamb dies

in its mother’s womb. This season is all
one choir, the geese on the roof, the ticks
in the grass, the shadowy black

of sunflower seeds oversleeping
in my pocket.
Sham-e-Ali Nayeem

Raath Ki Rani

By Sham-e-Ali Nayeem The other night I sensed her
fragrance makes presence
known before witness.

Heard faint flowers
unseen anklets worn by
ghosts of Hyderabadi streets.
Aiya Sakr

Shahrazad, circa 2024

By Aiya Sakr On the day of the first flour massacre,
nothing I have ever said has been untrue.

Fourteen thousand and three hundred white
PVC flags flutter in the early spring morning.

By the time I cross the lawn, the IDF have killed
another child, and another flag springs up

Like a poppy.
This simile is too easy.
Arumandhira Howard

Soft Black Girl Aesthetic

By Arumandhira Howard We are made shy / sun, kissing another heartless / night awake. We are made satin silking / pompon locs. Cotton, banana pudding, baby’s / breath. These cornbread thighs, our blessed butterfly / knives. We are made to de-stem hardened men like bull-headed / bougainvillea.
Sasa Aakil

Black Mermaids and Swimming and Red Hair and Ancestry

By Sasa Aakil They say, Ariel could never be black.
That black folks don't have red hair and can't swim no how.
They list all the reasons we have no right to this title
and I can only think of Hasan.

Brown skin boy with hair red as fire.
Quick wit, quick smile.
Born with sunset resting atop his head like crown.
Adeeba Shahid Talukder

Mehfil

By Adeeba Shahid Talukder Tonight,
the beloved ascends
the rungs of stars;

seated on a mirrored
cushion, she is both spectacle
and witness,

both of the mehfil
and its all-seeing god.
Ashna Ali

Social Distance Theory

By Ashna Ali On an assemblage of screens on another firework evening
Ruthie Gilmore reminds us that abolition is not recitation.
Tarik Dobbs

Skybridge Rendering Above Minneapolis & the West Bank

By Tarik Dobbs Chorus: Like a bridge over troubled water…
For years, settlers longingly, vertical, build over us, Starbucks has no sinks. Will we go? Lately, the bridge, their throne. When even these are somewhere to watch from, to drop a knee & propose somewhere to feel for a bank.
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