“I used to beat on queers.” My dad’s words were pulled from his throat like a prime bass on a fishing line. We watched it, muted, as it fought for air at our feet. My girlfriend’s hands were clammy with nervousness and July. My family’s hands were blissfully unaware, a few yards away, dancing breezily
CategoryCreative writing
When Feminism Saves your Life
“There is something paradoxically feminist about the violent inverted logic of eating disorders – a desperate and deadly psychological stand – in for the kind of personal and political freedoms we have not yet achieved. Women and girls who have been denied their own autonomy find a measure of that autonomy in physical and psychological
Rise
Tattoos are forbidden by their god Their god who is them Your body will not enter heaven The body cannot be a canvas Skin cannot be art It has to carry its wounds Visible, scarred, shamed Violated with no chance Of empowerment The bodies are a cradle of shame The inherent female guilt Your yellow
Privileged Exile
You read the words of Mahmoud Darwish, his nostalgia, revolution and melancholia swirl the desert dust over times and places to reach your eye. Yes, I swear. This is how the tear settled on my dry cheek. And Nizar Qabbani whose eroticism, love and poetic (but also political) fight for social justice make you tingle
Language & Identity by the Beach
Watching the sun’s last rays glisten on the waves of the Mediterranean as its burning flame anticipates being quenched by the Sea’s cool water, I listen to Yasmine Hamdan’s raspy Lebanese dialect as she sings of Sehnsucht and heartache (watch video here) . Whether it’s a blessing or a curse, these are things I have long
Untitled: A Poem
I thiNk of love More than aNythiNg else. My skin always Bruised very Easily It is the oNly Physical RepReseNtatioN of How My MiNd experieNces life. My soul TurNs Black aNd Blue as easily as My skin Does. From the smallest Bumps, EvEn a Good thinG If pRessed too lonG, too strongly. The iNk emBedded
Life’s too Short to Learn German, But I’m Going to do it Anyways
After about four months of classes and 5 months in Germany, I find myself in German A2, well aware that German — with its random articles and various cases, not to mention the seemingly impossible sound that lingers in the gap between ‘sh’ and ‘ch’ — is a difficult language to learn. But there