Young Adult Catalogue
Rasha Abdulhadi
since then, there has been fear: of being eaten
by snakes and crocodiles, or else carried on a carpet
horde of luna moths in winged migration from beneath the bed,
or wetted with the cigarette kisses of red-headed grandmothers,
or consumed by cousins in their scheming,
bentbroke by the rigid condition of family, by
the insistent kiss of suitors arriving too early,
then drowned in the whirl of first love’s bond
and finding in the aftermath only bodily survival,
the lost primordial, a flicker of will, and after that still
held captive in the collapsing tent of a parent’s age,
reaching the edge of forests infinite, or discarded as a mercenary, and what else:
burning through yourself until there was nothing left.
Rasha Abdulhadi is a queer Palestinian Southerner who cut their teeth organizing on the southsides of Chicago and Atlanta. Their work is anthologized in Unfettered Hexes, Halal if You Hear Me, Super Stoked, and Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia Butler. As a fiber artist, poet, and speculative fiction writer/editor, Rasha is a member of Justice for Muslims Collective and Alternate ROOTS. Their new chapbook is who is owed springtime (Neon Hemlock).