ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Author photo by Tehan Ketema
Hajjar Baban is the author of Relative to Blood (Penmanship Books, 2018) and What I Know of the Mountains (Anhinga Press, 2019). A Pakistan-born Afghan Kurdish poet, she is currently studying Creative Writing, Arabic, and Persian at the University of Wisconsin — Madison through the First Wave Scholarship Program. She served as the 2017 Detroit Youth Poet Laureate and has work appearing in The Offing, New Delta Review, and Foundry, among others. She is a Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and Pushcart nominee. She spends most of her time avoiding running from herself.
Also by Hajjar Baban:
Two Poems
when I leave, I wash & re empty what
On October 13th, Kurdistan’s Peshmerga Forces went under attack by the Iranian-backed Shia militias near Kirkuk
If My Father Gave Me the Words in His Language
“you are in many ways more ready than other
nations that freed themselves before from cruelty.”
— Qazi Muhammad
I am proud of my execution. No one
had to see how my [ ] hung by [ ] above
my [ ] head. Everyone in the new [ ]
[ ] at my young daughter. She [ ] what they say
when alone. If I let them [ ] what happened to me they might
[ ]
in retreat. I could [ ] the past if I cover my [ ] with
another life. I am [ ] enough to bring another country to
this [ ] usually, I wake to [ ] remind of the air
and then, I am just
my beating chest. My weeping [ ] headed
toward a transfer / my body [ ] serving so many.
‘If My Father Gave Me the Words in His Language,’ is an attempt to uncover and replace the horror of a history inaccessible to me through memory. The image of my father is crafted instead, through the knowledge of others. Qazi Muhammad was an Iranian Kurdish separatist leader who, when sentenced to death by an Iranian Military Court, was left hanging for two days. In my imagination, I know the words my father would say for Muhammad, for the idea of Kurdistan, for his daughter, etc. are missing. The space throughout this poem is left for the language he never taught me, Kurdish, but also to signify the break in understanding between my father & me, and subsequently any men I look to understand, whether historic Kurdish figures, or not.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
