After Maghreb prayer: fat peonies in bloom over the pergola.The hiccup of a baby bounced on a knee. Generations of womensit on white lawn chairs arranged in a gentle crescent.The men tend to the meat. Across the poolI sit with my host and listen to their language. A man detachesfrom the group, walks over with a plate of rice & a pack of cigarettes.The air is awkward until all cigarettes are lit. I look into his eyesalthough I was taught not to. They are hard, old as salt.He rolls up a sleeve, the forearm a sheet of puckered skin: “shrapnel”he says, then is still, & looks far past me into the kind of darknessthat turns a man my age into stone. The Bosniakgroundskeeper, whose peonies are so lush they should veilthemselves, he never smiled, not once.
In Maryland, Before the Dayton Accords
Feature Date
Series
Selected By
Share This Poem
Print This Poem
“In Maryland, Before the Dayton Accords” from IN THE HOUSE OF MODERN UPBRINGING FOR GIRLS: by Majda Gama.
Published by Wandering Aengus Press on April 5, 2025.
Copyright © 2025 by Majda Gama.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Majda Gama is the author of the debut poetry collection In the House of Modern Upbringing for Girls, winner of the Wandering Aengus Press prize for poetry, and the chapbook The Call of Paradise selected by Diane Seuss for the Two Sylvia’s press chapbook prize. Her poetry has been published in Adroit, AGNI, Ploughshares, POETRY, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly, and Tupleo Quarterly. Her honors include a Gregory Djanikian Scholar award from The Adroit Journal and the Graybeal-Gowen award for Virginia poets from Shenandoah literary journal. In 2025 she received a special mention from the Pushcart Prize for a poem published by Terrain.
Eastsound, Washington
Winner of the 2024 Wandering Aengus Book Award in Poetry
"In the House of Modern Upbringing for Girls vividly chronicles girlhood, womanhood, personhood, humanhood, the passage of time, the indelibility of history, and the grief and joy of being in this world and on this earth. It’s a beautifully midlife book, with all the wisdom and none of the clichés. Majda Gama looks back to her 1980s childhood in oil-boom Jidda and Reagan-era Northern Virginia, to her 1990s young adulthood in a now-gone punk-rock Washington, D.C., and other cities, and to the echoes of history in Ba’albek and the Emirati desert. On every page, we witness a life lived and observed in brave detail. This collection is a treasure."
—Eman Quotah, Arab American Book Award-winning author of Bride of the Sea
"Majda Gama’s In the House of Modern Upbringing for Girls looks at the world through the revelatory eye of girlhood. The poems traverse country and landscape as Gama writes from where she 'was born and [is] not from. That is the Arab condition.' This book is a tactile beauty of stark contrasts. It names the stars then touches the ground with bare feet. I longed to hang out with the girl in these poems, listening to Joan Jett, cigarette between my lips. Pay attention to Majda Gama. Her sensibility fills in the spaces we overlook."
—Jessica Cuello, Yours, Creature (JackLeg Press, 2023)
Poetry Daily Depends on You
With your support, we make reading the best contemporary poetry a treasured daily experience. Consider a contribution today.
