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      April 30, 2018Final Portrait of the SudaneseDalia Elhassan

      my parents sit side by side
      in the half-light
      two bodies, a half-world
      away from me, singing
      the way only sudanis know
      how to.

      eDalia

      shuf al-zaman ya yuma
      sayignee ba’eed khalas
      look at this time, oh mama,
      it’s taking me so far
      on the uptown 6 train
      my father—in sudan
      —calls to ask us how we’re doing
      are you okay? how’s your mother?
      my mother, in the bronx,
      waiting for her children
      to come home,
      to learn her mother’s language,
      i swallowed two other languages
      before downing my own
      gutted my throat
      of any accent
      spent years tearing
      up maps of africa
      trying to rub the sandalwood
      musk from behind my ears
      i don’t bother to learn
      the songs my parents sing,
      instead i write poems,
      about our hyphenated bodies
      about the frankincense smoke
      dancing on hot coal
      about their hands
      that never touch
      and all the ways
      i hardly recognize them.

      from #59 - Spring 2018

      Dalia Elhassan

      “These poems were born out of years of recognizing difference and paying close attention to the way the world functioned around me as a young Sudanese woman in the diaspora and the complex identities that live on my body. Growing up, it felt like the world I was most familiar with knew very little of Sudanese people or Sudanese culture, lifestyle, art, song, pain, triumph. Being Sudanese in the diaspora is an experience of being asked to identify oneself on a daily basis. My racial, ethnic, and gendered constitution has led me to believe in poetry as a space for radical change and transformation. This space fosters community, self-compassion, and the courage to mark one’s own existence. I have turned to poetry as a space to draw from and create my own reality in the face of oppressive structures and institutions that seek to take that power away from me. The only Sudan I will ever understand a connection to is the Sudan I can find in art and in poetry. Poets like Safia Elhillo, whose work is deeply familiar and feels like home to me, remind me often that the country I build in my poetry is the only country I have an allegiance to. Poetry blurs the lines between the political and the personal. Poetry speaks to and gives voice both to what can be said and what hides in the fabric of silence. In a poem, I can write my experiences into consciousness. I never want to forget or be made to forget who I am and what I came from. I never want us to think of ourselves, as Sudanese people in the diaspora and in Sudan, as a forgotten people. I never want to be ashamed of being Sudanese ever again.”

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