POETRY & PROSE

November Melodies

Oh you chipped, red-rusted leaves, swinging to and fro’,  beneath the yel-low— scattered, blanched, frayed   You stayed a little longer this year: Knowing that hearts cannot help but long to witness the morning song of your ever-beating autumn: Just another November Melody

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CULTURE, LITERATURE, POETRY & PROSE

Frankly, my dear, I do give a damn

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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CULTURE, POETRY & PROSE

Seasonal Poetry

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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FEMINISM, POETRY & PROSE

The language of love that you taught me

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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MENTAL HEALTH, POETRY & PROSE

Mermaid

“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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POETRY & PROSE, THE ARTS

Validation

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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