Malak

When the speaker’s Iranian grandmother who read fortunes passes away, she begins to understand that she’s inherited her grandmother’s gifts. Without an initiation to forecasting, the speaker is left to make sense of her history and her future through signs and experiences she can’t explain. The poems excavate the past to make sense of loss and inheritance, of magic and fate. Teeming with foxes and birds, Malak translates what’s seen and unseen, and what can be heard in the quiet.

Jenny Sadre-Orafai is the author of Paper Cotton Leather, Malak, and Dear Outsiders and coauthor of Book of Levitations. Her poetry has appeared in Puerto del Sol, Cream City Review, Ninth Letter, and The Cortland Review. Her prose has appeared in The Rumpus, Fourteen Hills, and The Los Angeles Review. She cofounded and coedits Josephine Quarterly and teaches creative writing at Kennesaw State University.