This honest review of Hazem Fahmy’s Waiting for Frank Ocean in Cairo was in exchange for an Advance Reading Copy provided to the author by Half Mystic Press. . . . In the spirit of full confession, that unsolicited offering that often makes for great poetry, I had never listened to Frank Ocean before I […]
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It was in 2019 that I met Megha Rao at the very first open mic I attended. I was enchanted by her piece which took me to lands I’d never known, seeing things I’d never seen. That’s what her poems are, they’re so much more than what they seem. Her latest publication, Teething, is what […]
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Featured Illustration: Hanifa Abdul Hameed I am told Europe is beautiful in the summer Indian summers try their best to melt you to the ground. How shall I compare thy summer’s day to mine? Our flowers are scorched under the sun The same sun that shines so benevolently on you This same flower that smiles […]
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My mother told me to ‘Find someone who we love as hard as you’ I listened and this is where it has taken me An unwanted refugee of your heart A cycle of piercing memories Like my existence is for you to wear And my soul you stole so silently. I cannot speak what […]
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When my mental health was at its lowest point, I was given a prescription of Prozac. My mood didn’t dip like before, but I wasn’t happy, either.
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“Mermaid” is my frustration with the poetry community. As a poet, I should not have to write about all the ways I’m repressed and mistreated to satiate a vicarious readership.
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On the fiery fields of Anatolia, She hears the shrill yell of her countrymen. Lead from another land with the ochre and sand.
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I don’t know why I seek validation from the one who only sees me as a number, from the one who reads my name simply as a word with no life attached to it. I don’t know why I seek validation from a society who shushes away cries of change, telling those cries that they’re […]
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The crescent moon is glimmering as we’re lying down beneath the stars. The film is silently playing while the fireflies surround the yard. As our hands lightly touch, it makes me want to give you all that I have. Drowning in your ocean blue eyes. The smell of your perfume lingers in my sheets, a […]
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