by Holly Willis
mythos
she was only eight
when they burnt down her village
dragged her out from under her dreams
those who left
became wandering nomads
those who stayed
became wandering tales
she was not a tale
holding her mom’s dress tight
she became a voice
carrying those stories
across granite mountains
brutal storms
when she told us of these wanderings
my grandma
i could not keep track of the times
she brought us back
from the brink of extinction
Sarwa Azeez, a Kurdish poet, researcher, and translator, is a Fulbright alumna who earned her second Master’s in Creative Writing from Nebraska-Lincoln University. Her debut poetry pamphlet, Remote, was published by 4Word in 2019. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Orison’s Best Spiritual Literature, Sarwa’s work has been featured in numerous publications including Parentheses Journal, Writing for A Woman’s Voice, The International Journal of Genocide Studies and Prevention, the other side of hope, Collateral, and more. Her writing looks for the beauty in a war-torn world. It also seeks to define identity and confront issues of equal gender representation and violence in male dominant communities.
Holly Willis is a writer, photographer, and filmmaker based in Los Angeles whose work examines the materiality of images within a broader context of new materialist philosophy and the histories of experimental film, video, and photography with the goal to design encounters with media that spark an embodied sense of curiosity and wonder. Instagram: @hollylwillis.