Hola, it’s 3:05 PM! Time to take a cafecito break!
Welcome to Poem in the Afternoon, read by a woman-identifying writer who is attending Miami Book Fair 2023. Enjoy this taste of poetry, sponsored by Miami Book Fair, 305 Cafecito (Miami’s Official Cafecito Break), and SWWIM, with Miami's favorite beverage—a cafecito, of course! We look forward to seeing you at the Fair.
Appearance at Miami Book Fair 2023: Sahar Muradi, Saturday 11/18, 12:30 pm, Room 8303
Transcipt of poem: Father learned exile by television And this was wartime. Mother washed. I sat quietly with a tin Full of pictures. Night drew. My hands grew warm touching their faces In youth. There was a roll of bills in a pocket in the closet But why had she shown it to me? Mother’s hands made rough sounds on her uniform. It was green Like the tips of my eyes, now bedtime. The corners I touched felt like tusks. “We say elephant tears,” he once said. In my picture tin The war raged on: black and white A fugitive zebra on the street With my heart pulsing red in its mouth.
Sahar Muradi is author of the collection OCTOBERS, selected by Naomi Shihab Nye for the 2022 Donald Hall Prize for Poetry and a finalist for the National Poetry Series. She is author of the chapbooks [ G A T E S ], Ask Hafiz, A Garden Beyond My Hand, and A Ritual in X Movements. She is co-editor, with Seelai Karzai, of EMERGENC(Y): Writing Afghan Lives Beyond the Forever War, An Anthology of Writing from Afghanistan and its Diaspora; and, with Zohra Saed, of One Story, Thirty Stories: An Anthology of Contemporary Afghan American Literature. Sahar lives in New York City, where she directs the arts education programs at City Lore and dearly believes in the bottom of the rice pot. See saharmuradi.com for more.
From the book, OCTOBERS (University of Pittsburgh Press, October, 2023). Permission granted by the author.
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