My poem, “The American Mercenary”, was recently published in the Eat the Rich issue of New School’s The Inquisitive Eater.
This poem was written after former Gaza Humanitarian Foundation “contractor” turned whistleblower, Anthony Aguilar, recounted witnessing Israeli soldiers and American mercenaries participate in massacres on civilians, including young children, at so-called “aid” distribution sites. You can read the poem here.
Written in response to the death of a Palestinian-American father, who was killed in the West Bank while I was there visiting with family, my flash essay “Witness”, was recently published in X-R-A-Y. Read it here.
Despite his case being well-documented and receiving significant attention in U.S. media, no one has been held accountable, and it is clear there will be no justice. Read more about him here.
Thank you to the editors of Stonecoast Review for choosing my artwork, “Luna Husam Abu Nada (Liberty)” to be the cover image of their Spring 2026 Issue, centered around the theme Freedom. You can find and purchase Issue 24 here.
Learn more about the little girl who inspired this piece from Martyrs of Gaza here.
An essay I’ve had in the works over a long period, it explores our family’s trips to the National Museum of African American History & Culture. Particularly reckoning with the savage murder of Emmett Till, this piece explores parallels with the January 2024 murder of Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, an American boy murdered in the West Bank, Palestine, and the complexities of raising kids in a country that is so brutal for so many.
Featured in the inaugural issue of Ivo Review–a publication I was drawn to for their mission “of lifting the voices of those who need justice, those who have been abandoned, and of telling the stories that need to be told resonates with us in a very real way”–you can read my essay and the rest of Issue One here.
My short story, “The Last Abduction” is currently up on Defenestrationism.net, the pre-eminent platform in “The Art of Throwing People Out Windows” (not to give too much away) as a finalist in their 2025 Short Story Contest. You can read my story, which has maybe a less straightforward take on the subject-matter here.
A couple of quick notes on the story, it was first published in the Fall 2023 Issue of the now-defunct NYU student-run magazine Caustic Frolic, and subsequently removed along with their entire database of issues 🙁 The story was inspired by a mix of personal experience, news stories and is something I initially imagined with a little alien illustration I created and who kept speaking to me.
Public voting for the contest begins September 1, 2025, so if you read the story and find yourself compelled, please vote!
Been coming back to this poem over the years, trying to get it just right and wondering if it will ever make sense to anyone, so it’s fitting that it’s published in Maintenant, a print journal dedicated to contemporary dada art and writing. IYKYK
A couple of months ago, ArabLit Quarterly put out a call for Letters exploring Grief, exploring what curator Abdelrahman ElGendy explains “not as a final act or resolution, but an opening.” When I read the call, I took a moment to sit with my thoughts and feelings about the ongoing 76+ year genocide in Palestine and what it means to be as an American, writing from the center of empire. “Sonnet for Sidra from America” is a tip-of-the-iceberg-result of this grief and I’m so honored to be included in this deeply thoughtful, meditative Spring 2025 Issue.
I know–I almost couldn’t believe it either! At the Witness release party last week a few of the other contributors mentioned how they have been trying and getting rejected from Witness for years, and wow solidarity. Definitely was in the same boat and could barely believe my eyes when I saw the acceptance email! I have always admired Witness for publishing the kinds of writing that feels really important and so very right now. This is all me saying that I am so deeply honored to have my poem published in their latest issue, focusing on Heat–especially at the end of the world (or whatever this is).
My poem, “Make-a-Wish” is something that I first drafted in the poet Dorothy Chan’s Honey Literary sonnet workshop. I hadn’t really written a sonnet before, which I think like most poets who are still really focused on learning craft are more tuning the tools of free verse. I thought her approach to a modern sonnet made it really exciting and I am happy to say that I have written many since. Major shoutout and thanks and general awe and and all the best things to Dr. Chan–and of course the Editors and team at Witness! Oh and support them by purchasing a copy here.
Late update (is there a theme here?), but I am so proud to share that Yellow Arrow nominated my poem “My son wants to know what happened before the universe &” for the Best of the Net Anthology 2025 from Sundress Publications. Read my poem here and congratulations to all nominees!
A fully-prose-poem issue, DMQ Review’s Fall 2024 Issue has poems from so many poets that I greatly admire (hero status), and I am so honored to have a poem appearing on screens, pages, devices (?) alongside them!
“Stuck Inside” is a piece that is so dear to me because it is one of my first explorations into prose poetry and was written during one of Jose Hernandez Diaz’s prose poetry workshops (which I highly recommend). This poem was inspired by James Tate’s “Bounden Duty”, which struck me as the poetic embodiment of paranoia. I started thinking about ways to fully capture other psychological states and, writing this poem on an airplane, anxiety naturally bullied its way to the front.
You can read “Stuck Inside” and all of the Fall 2024 Issue of DMQ Review here.