May 15, 2026

letter to fadwa tuqan

by Safa Khatib

This Mizna Online exclusive feature is published as part of Mizna 26.2: Translational, link to purchase HERE.

—Nour Eldin H., Managing Editor

your poems 
keep the record of the nightmare, which
I once called a future, 

and whose guards sow the crops of hell,
and plant roses of the wound 

this poem
suffocates on my tongue, one of the many
tongues of the executioner

let the poem rise with the death of the guards—

Safa Khatib is a poet, translator, and teacher living in St. Louis, MO. She is the author of A Dress of Locusts (Bloomsbury 2025).