it is not a shame to work // الشغل مش عيب

Ghinwa Jawhari

says my mother so i waittables in little italy untilmy heels cut my heels.my father used to waitat sammy’s, corned beefbrining his nails like dye.my mother waited on hermother, then us, then whitesin hospital beds baying forice chips, the remote. whilemy father pulls his bad leglike a plow, pounding doughfor regulars, they call him“brother.” i insist الشغل مش عيبwhen i drag garbage bags likebodies to the curb or flarea toothbrush against the grout.every day i am asked if i amitalian. men in the kitchen pinchpasta into bowties, my bare elbow.my mother implies men existto work. this role absolves them.then she laces up the sneakers i bought for her, late for her shift.

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Ghinwa Jawhari is the author of the chapbook ‘BINT,’ which was selected for Radix Media’s Own Voices Chapbook Prize. Her poetry, fiction, and essays appear in The Common, Al Rawiya, The Margins, Rusted Radishes, and elsewhere. 

Salt Hill

51

Syracuse, New York

Syracuse University

Editors-in-Chief
Dylan Hoffman
Lily Holloway

Managing Editor
Jo Clark

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Salt Hill is a biannual literary journal publishing outstanding new fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and art by people at various stages in their literary and artistic careers. We publish new and emerging writers alongside those with long, illustrious careers in the literary arts.

We are interested in work that represents a broad spectrum of experience. We believe it is critical to lift up the voices of writers and artists who have been traditionally underrepresented in the literary arts. As such, we feel an urgency to read and consider work by people of color, women, queer people, non-binary folks, and anyone else who has been marginalized by the institutions which have, for so long, dominated the publishing scene.

Salt Hill is produced by writers in and affiliated with the Graduate Creative Writing Program at Syracuse University and is funded in part by the College of Arts & Sciences and the Graduate Student Organization of Syracuse University.

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