3 months & I haven’t fixed you. now I’m a mother before I’ve been robbedof a sister & a mother from this. so I walk around with my wombsticking out. & my dress attracts bees. but I keep surviving/surprising myself. the mirror. this song makes memore alive: G.O.Y.D. (Lava La Rue). in a show I watched about a beautiful lot like ours one of the mothers named her daughter Lava. she’ highas shit. her daughter had a nose like mine & hair crisp as the Tigris. at the endthe handsome white protagonist tells their girlfriend I don’t need you as much.but I still want you. do you want me? & the girlfriend had medium length hair &she said yes.& I was tired. & you never asked. always offered to feed my friendsthree times when they came in the house. by 9pm convince each one to eat.once Tuesday & I was on my period & my spaghetti tasted &I watched you enjoy football & you were so far away from me I felt I might diejust from that if not the microplastics most of the women I’ve loved have been scientists. Iwonder if this is a survival instinct too. I ask them how to cheat on my pset & Ising loud to convince them I’m no longer afraid. & my hair is uneven. I for at the beginning of August, spend two weeks evening the tanon my breasts. reminded me I knew I loved it because I wanted itto leave a mark. when I was eight I saw Haifa Wehbe on the television in a beigedress & mama clicked her tongue. I think that was when I realized I was a girl.keresh. bzaz. kehss. I press my mouth to my secret. no languagefor a secret, or my Arab womanhood also originates from & theway the trees siblinged my legs. is my gender chlorophyll? air left alone fromsoldiers? & I walk around with my womb sticking out. you callme pretty in my with dahlias on it.
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First published in Mizna 25.2—Futurities (2024) and reprinted here with permission.
Maya Salameh is the author of MERMAID THEORY (Haymarket Books, 2026) and HOW TO MAKE AN ALGORITHM IN THE MICROWAVE (University of Arkansas Press, 2022), winner of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize and finalist for the California Book Award. She is a 2025 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, winner of the Markowitz Award for Exceptional New Writers, and has served as a National Student Poet, America’s highest honor for youth poets. Her work has appeared in Mizna, The Offing, Poetry, Gulf Coast, The Rumpus, AGNI, and ANMLY, among others. She can be found @mayaslmh or mayasalameh.com.
25.2
St. Paul, Minnesota
Executive + Artistic Director
Lana Barkawi
Editorial Assistant
Sarah Dillard
Mizna is a critical platform for contemporary literature, art, film, and cultural programming centering the work of Arab and Southwest Asian and North African artists. For twenty years, we have sought to reflect the depth and multiplicity of our community and have been committed to being a space for Arab, Muslim, and other artists from the region to reclaim our narratives and engage audiences in meaningful and artistically excellent art.
We publish Mizna: Prose, Poetry and Art Exploring Arab America, the only Arab American lit and art journal in the country; produce the Twin Cities Arab Film Festival, the largest and longest running Arab film fest in the Midwest; and offer classes, readings, performances, public art, and community events, having featured over 400 local and global writers, filmmakers, and artists.
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