Smile & Nod

The English definition of
Arabic was lost due to severe
Infrastructural damage & hundreds dead
On assignment from my mother
I learned Allah was just a word for god
The capital A was a silent woman’s mini-bio
She prayed about stomach pain

Rami Karim is a writer and artist based in Brooklyn. Their work has appeared in Apogee, The Brooklyn Review, The Invisible Bear, and Peregrine, and their chapbook is Smile & Nod (Wendy’s Subway, 2017). Karim teaches writing at the City University of New York and is a 2017 Margins Fellow at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop.