August 7, 2025

“the tart air from Damascus”—New Syrian Poetry

by M. Hakim

In this debut poetry publication by Syrian-American mathematician, musician, and writer M. Hakim, I am reminded of the ways grief acts on language in the most intimate details. In our exchange for editing the poem, Hakim described the ways punctuation is governed not by traditional grammar, but by associations of grief: sentences pairing with each other like ghosts to former inhabitations, spectral residues of once-restricted sites like Qasioun, the gifting of an oud, and the speculative...

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