by Diya Abbas
may I accept the murdered world
for what an idea is worth
do you think
someone didn’t die for us to be here?
picking pears off trees as if
my mind had not grown wooly and scabbed
muck on my suede muscle
ask carefully,
how do I answer an accident with another
pillow mint, license to kill
in high school
I twitched and they called me a terrorist
I grew into mine and they demanded my papers—
Diya Abbas is a first generation Pakistani poet from St.Louis. They were named the 2022 George B. Hill Poetry Prize winner. Diya is currently studying Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin Madison through the First Wave program.
Emerge Literary Journal 