In which I speak about the literary journal Mizna.

 Mizna is published on bi-annually, which to me is 'on a somewhat irregular basis.'

Perhaps that's not surprising, as it's the only literary journal focused specifically on Arab-American culture. When I picked up Volume 11 at the 2012 AWP convention the woman at the booth seemed confused, unsure that this was the thing I actually wanted.

I can't blame her. I'm a white girl from the middle of the woods. Most while girls from the middle of the woods are probably content to stay there, surrounded by a pallet of cream and milk but myself? Nah. I'm all about colors.

Mizna, from the credits pages of Volume 11, issue 1, “is an Arabic word meaning 'the cloud of the desert.' This cloud shades and protects the desert traveler, easing the journey.” Overflowing with powerful poetry and short stories, the journal itself is like a ghost of rain, a breath of fresh air: through literature, I am allowed come to better understand a culture I have been told I am not allowed to know.

We all hold our cultures and beliefs close to our chests and none moreso than those a majority has condemned for the acts of a few. Asian-Americans, African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans and Arab-Americans all fall under the same umbrella of 'them' and frankly I believe it's time we threw the umbrella away and enjoyed the storm.

This particular issue of Mizna was dedicated in memoriam to Mamoud Darwish, a Palestinian poet. His poem The Cypress Broke, which was translated by Fady Joudah, is not long. But as I read the words and felt the rhythm I found myself wishing I could hear it in Darwish's native tongue. “The cypress broke like a minaret, and slept on/the road upon its chapped shadow, dark, green/as it has always been.” I've always felt that the effect of good poetry is this: I should want to read more of this poets work immediately. I should feel it viscerally in my gut, a tearing desire to read more of their words. It is not like prose: poetry is now, demanding, a lightning strike.

There are no audio recordings of Darwish reading The Cypress Broke, but there are plenty of his other poems including “He/She” and “A Lesson from Kama Sutra,” which I wasted no time in listening to. In a world where the words of poets realities away are available, there is no reason not to listen. Darwish's voice rumbles like a stone rolling downhill: pleasantly frightening in only the vaguest of ways.

In addition to Darwish, this particular issue of Mizna offers poetry from Philip Metres, who teaches at John Carroll University. As the opening poem of the issue, “Gypsy at Auschwitz, Marked for Reduction”: A Photograph draws the uncomfortable parallels between past and present, the loss of identity and the subsequent loss of ones very self both in the metaphorical and terrifyingly literal sense.

“He's cut

from darker cloth, but his mustache

is cropped to the familiar

small brush beneath his nose,

his overcoat tight in his small

shoulders somehow familiar--

but the mane of his black hair's

stubble now, which means more

or less forever. His stiff posture

betrays the failure

of his imposture, and not even

the white swastika armband

will save him.”

If there is a stronger way to start off a volume of literature that deals heavily with the loss of Arab identity, I can't think of it.

In contrast, Richard Broderick's Apologies for a War Crime was inspired by the events in Gaza in January of 2009, where a conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians erupted into violence, leading to the death of 1,730 people, including 313 children. The long-standing rift between Israel and Palestine is one I feel Americans do not understand, and may not even be capable of understanding: our conflicts tend to be in the vein of throwing our arms around and screaming until we get our way, but Roderick paints the incidents as tragic and almost inevitable.

“Your very existence is a provocation,

your simple aspirations a subterfuge

for sinister designs, the everyday sounds

of your marketplace, the scrape of chair legs

in your classrooms, voices coming

from your bedrooms, a cry for heavy

weaponry, the axiom of explosions.

Don't you see? The way you cringe

when struck calls forth the blow.

To you we return the spurned friendships,

love curdled to a lemon rind,

the art schools' failed exams, the jealousy

of mirrors that can only look out and never

touch the pot of tea shared by friends.”

As I read through the pages of Mizna, as I browse through their website (because they are involved in so much more than just the literary journal, including readings, Arabic classes, music and the reading of Arabic childrens books to youth in the area around Minneapolis, where they are based) I am reminded just how small my little corner of the world is. If literature should do anything for you, it is this: it should make you feel small and insignificant. It should make you hunger for more, it should drive your desire to explore and seek and learn. Perhaps not all of the pieces within Mizna are to my taste, but there's no denying that they are striving to educate others, to shift their paradigm. You can lose your ability to move forward when you sit stagnant for too long and there is a world of literature waiting. Palestinian, Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Russian, Danish.

All it takes is a little willingness to step out of the box of what you know, and into the world of what you don't.