Mizna Online

Two Poems from Nima Hasan

August 20, 2026
by Nima Hasan

I gather a bouquet of flowers
to cradle this grief,
or give it color, at least.

Read More


A Diasporic Requiem: Watching Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei’s...

August 14, 2026
by Sima Shakhsari

In the summer of 1989, my mother and I drove to participate in Ayatollah Khomeini’s public funeral. His body was displayed in a refrigerated glass case sitting atop an elevated platform in what was then a vast empty lot, which later became the Imam Khomeini Mosalla Mosque. The heat of that summer day was intense, and the sheer size of the crowd was astonishing.

Read More


30 More SWANA Books to Read in 2026

August 4, 2026
by Samia Saliba

2026 continues to be an exciting year for SWANA literature, with many stunning debuts, new releases and translations from longtime favorites, and experiments in new genres.

Read More


Disability Folio

July 31, 2026
by Mizna Staff

As we close yet another Disability Pride Month amidst ever-escalating warfare and ethnic cleansing against Palestinian, Sudanese, Iranian, Lebanese, and many more peoples across the SWANA region and Global South, it is of dire importance to reflect on the systems that debilitize, incapacitate, maim, and otherwise catastrophize both our bodies and our body politics. The impossible, still-opening wounds of the US-Zionist genocide in Gaza, which have surpassed the long-upheld regime of

Read More


My Uncle Who Died of AIDS Probably

July 31, 2026
by Tarik Dobbs

Your legs obliterated
& collapsing country

Read More


cane dweller

July 31, 2026
by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

here they are, young brown queer crippled and in love
holding hands in the co-op with an adaptive device like it’s nothing

Read More


In Response to the Capsized Boat and 65 People Drowned off the...

July 31, 2026
by Leila Chatti

At a distance,
I assume others are kind, and this seems an essential
difference.

Read More


Two Poems

July 31, 2026
by Rasha Abdulhadi

I read Palestine
when the news says Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Iraq.
I step around the bodies

Read More


Sharing My Days with Large Predators

July 31, 2026
by Joe Kadi

After dinner, when Baba goes to wash up, I tug on Mama’s sleeve. “When you go,” I say, “how will I know who I am?”

Read More


A Poem and an Essay

July 31, 2026
by Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán

In a time of hatreds. Record this memory of us (not) touching. Our lips (un)locked. Hands (un) twined. Letters braid with mine. Enbrine.

Read More


The hero is dead, long live the mountain: Faris Dajani’s Threshold

July 23, 2026
by leena aboutaleb

BALTIMORE—Faris Dajani, a Palestinian-Jordanian multidisciplinary artist, stuns in his first solo exhibition, Threshold, Image. Situated in Gallery CA off East Oliver St. in Baltimore, Dajani cuts the thread of an imperial, detached reality at its metaphorical knees.

Read More


Letter to a Disabled Brown Transsexual with Endometriosis

July 15, 2026
by Zeyn Joukhadar

After dinner, when Baba goes to wash up, I tug on Mama’s sleeve. “When you go,” I say, “how will I know who I am?”

Read More


Excerpt from THALASSA – Three Poems 

July 7, 2026
by leena aboutaleb

Love will reinvent you. I am made from all the people who love me. I know exactly who I am. Why do you still believe we are made out of images and not hearts? Are we all martyrs? My brother will take seven. Only God can dissolve me. Only God can judge me.

Read More


Silver & Black Terrorists, Steve Kerr’s Dad, Green Wristbands &...

July 2, 2026
by Robert Farid Karimi

I understand. This is a self-identified Male story. I claim this because sports taught me how to be a Male within its context. I wanted so badly, as a young man, to become that Male: an American Boy. Think, Estelle.*

Read More


The No-State Solution: Histories and Realities

June 26, 2026
by Mohammed Bamyeh

If a call for a “no-state solution” is theoretically valid anywhere, the current situation in Palestine provides us with empirical verification that humanity benefits more from the absence of the state than from its existence.

Read More


Authors