Featured Poets: Jennifer Jean in Correspondence with Dr. Hanaa Ahmed
Jennifer Jean, Dr. Hanaa Ahmed, and Wadaq Qais
Dr. Hanaa Ahmed and I are both members of the Her Story Is collective–a group of Iraqi and American artists who promote projects which expand linguistic, artistic, and cultural boundaries in response to global conflict, with a focus on centralizing the experience of women. For a long time, we were the only two in the group whose primary art was poetry. We wanted to know each other, but, after three years of kind notes and news of publications and prizes, we didn’t really know each other. In 2020, we decided to communicate more purposefully, to write “poem responses” to each other’s lives and work as a way of answering the question: “Where do you live?” We didn’t only mean where we lived geographically, but also where we lived in regards to our moods, obsessions, regrets, tragedies, delights, etcetera. We stepped up our communications via Zoom, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger and shared as much as our hearts would allow. Hanaa told me, “I was born in the war. I grew in the war. I’m still in the war.” I told her my father was absent my whole life because he suffered PTSD and schizophrenia as a result of his combat in the Vietnam War. She said she writes what she calls “prose poetry,” which eschews classic Arabic forms for a more natural way of speaking. I said it sounds a lot like what I would call “free verse.” Through our co-translator Wadaq Qais, we spoke carefully and wrote figuratively. We also worked with Wadaq to co-translate each other’s poems. This co-translation process added another level of intimacy to our exchanges because we had to consider each other’s words more carefully than we would otherwise. We were required to consult an expert in each other’s language since both of us are mono-lingual. This has been a slow knowing! A quiet dance. We shared about how we compose and revise our poems, about how poets make themselves immortal. Hanaa once told me, “A poet’s life is fated.” This is true. I believe our friendship is fated too. And, I know we both hope readers enjoy the poems in our forthcoming, collaborative collection Where Do You Live? أين تعيش؟ and that they feel a part of what has been a life-changing relationship.
The Enemy
by Jennifer Jean
“At my side the Demon writhes forever”
— Charles Baudelaire, “Destruction”
When two boys fought at school,
the kid crowd became
a third combatant—writhing
around the boys like a red
dragon—as usual. I
walked away like a good human—
when I was only
trying to abstain
from the warmth and protection
of a crowd, only trying out the danger
of a walk towards a quiet,
empty bench. A horror
vacui. But—I didn’t want to sit,
Hanaa. I know that now. Please,
sit with me, Hanaa—
when two boys fight. Let’s talk
of other facts
and Baudelaire, From now on,
my mind is autumn!
…I throw fresh seeds
out. Who knows what survives?
Girl of the Neighborhood (for Jennifer Jean)
by Hanaa Ahmed
"I didn't feel lonely, / For my loneliness was with me…"
– Adnan Al-Sayegh
And this eerie neighborhood
was a mystery she didn't care to solve!
She ignored its sudden silences,
twined apartments,
narrowed doors,
shadowed walls
like the branches of a lonely almond tree…
She cared only about the azure ocean above her home
and every border keeping her from the lifeless ones.
...
She cared only about that sky.
When joyful
she saw serenity in the waves of that sea…
When drowsy
she saw little lambs galloping at that horizon...
When mournful... she lined her eyes with her mother's kohl…
And when she returned from school—
with one foot, she’d leap over the doorstep,
deserting a hefty bundle of things she didn't care for…
And so, the movie of her life carried on...
She’d crossed the threshold: a child.
.
.
.
She’d leave, later: a poet!
Nttrwna Ktir
by Jennifer Jean
Music is harder than news. Shoves news
from a front into a movie.
It cleaves us. It is compulsion:
in the beginning, we blanketed the silence of our pictures
with tin pan piano; in the end, the secret chord
will tear out tears
whenever there’s a front in the heart.
And there always is—
given human nature. I’m guessing, Hanaa,
your sister Medin’s car crash in Southern Mosul has a track
in memoriam. The yellow Hyundai in a ditch,
four children startled in the back seat. Everyone safe:
to a tune by Fairuz, maybe, Nttrwna ktir!
Nttrwna, nttrwna, aaaahhhhh… nttrwna…
Meaning, patience. Music is a gesture
more human than historical. Like most families. Or, a minute
of silence. The moment I learn
the secret chord—strike it—
could be the beginning
of an important end. Or, just another stray bullet
in a stray feud on a front. Like the moment
I say, I don’t play team sports. The caveat being: “as a rule”
since I’m not anyone’s perfect.
Which is a hard word. Weaker than
love, further than hate. And like love, music is perfectly un-
translatable—
it gathers us together, Hanaa, into a golden vehicle
like family.
Life, a Yellow Vehicle
by Hanaa Ahmed
Music alone wasn't part of my biography,
it was a companion of war.
And, every song refers to my death in some war.
Yes, my friend,
music is compulsion—it brings us together,
teaches us that Life prefers to wind
up, down, across.
Life doesn't follow a straight path like light
or a sweet rhythmic sound.
She sees us as integers.
Tramples us, all at once,
despite a child's panic,
a mother’s prayer,
a birthday cake,
a cathartic song by Fairuz...
She stomps us... so we sneak from under her feet,
emerge as Zeros on the left side.
She feeds on us,
confirms to us that she is nothing but
a yellow vehicle.
Lunar New Year
by Jennifer Jean
There’s a face in the big bronze bowl near Old Frog Pond.
It’s not my face, exactly,
as I approach. Only an azure expanse, or
a layering of violet and tangerine streams,
or a cloud movement—as if a breeze
lifted the locks of a silvering brunette. If I hover above, exactly
above, the bowl, my wavering features
warp the water,
gravity pulls on my new jowls, on loose skin above my eyelids.
I see the enemy and the beloved
sees me framed by the small, smudged, and still bronze figures
seated along the edge of that big bowl. Cardinals,
Flickers, and Finches alight and aspire
in the nearby orchard—
where, soon, the blue dragon new year will bloom. Everyone
says it will be a crazy, a terrible year.
Even the odd sounds that tear at
the middle of every night—
the ones, Hanaa, you’ve likened to a ball of glass, slowly
falling—anticipate fear and its fruit.
Are they wrong? Right now,
I’m everyone—that is to say: one among many
smudged figures on the edge
of the bowl of the world. My face is so still,
I unknow fear and do not anticipate
the Blushing, the Greening, the Golden, the Nonesuch
apples. The balls of sweet, slowly
falling. The taste of the last of the crisp
before another new year near Old Frog Pond, where I can be
grounded in the midst of some unknowing—knowing
Spring is behind me,
Spring is before me.
The Dissolution...My Latest News
by Hanaa Ahmed
I thought I’d dozed—my friend—after his last message.
But there was an odd sound
like a ball of glass falling, slowly,
like a sound unwavering,
unbroken by the crash of shards scattering
or by the usual moment of silence after a globe rolls away.
I looked out the window... at the nothing, at the everything lifeless.
At fencing.
At unmoved trees… and, some stars robed by night...
Still, that noise persisted...
So, I jumped from bed,
descended the stairs... and the disturbance stalked me…
I remembered, then,
that hullabaloo outside the house no longer frightens me,
that hullabaloo inside the house no longer frightens me.
Still—I have a stalker.
And I have to hug myself… feel my blood clotting,
rolling... inside me.
Feel a recoil,
a little by little…
a shrinking because of his icy message!
Dr. Hanaa Ahmed was born in Mosul, Iraq. She is a prize-winning poet and short story writer who has participated in critical conferences and international poetry festivals. She has a PhD of Philosophy in Arabic Literature. Her books include the poetry collections My Sorrow’s Reward from His Collar and Zahr (Flowers), as well as two books of criticism: The Dialectic of Poetry and Prose in Modernist Poetry, and The Poetics of the Prose Poem. Additionally, she’s released a children's book: Sultan and Shanidar. Hanaa teaches at the University of Mosul.
Jennifer Jean was born in Venice, California in America. She is the author of VOZ, The Fool, Object Lesson, and Object Lesson: a Guide to Writing Poetry. She’s the editor of Other Paths for Shahrazad: a Bilingual Anthology of Contemporary Poetry by Arab Women (Tupelo Press, 2025). She’s received honors from DISQUIET, the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, the Mass Cultural Council, and the Academy of American Poets. Her poems and co-translations have appeared in POETRY, Rattle, On the Seawall, the Los Angeles Review, The Common, and elsewhere. Jennifer is an organizer for the Her Story Is collective and she is the senior program manager of 24PearlStreet–the Fine Arts Work Center’s online writing program. For more information, visit: http://www.jenniferjeanwriter.com
Wadaq Qais was born in Basra, Iraq. She received a degree in accounting in 2021. Later, she found her true calling in the Translation Department at the University of Basra, College of the Arts, where she is completing her studies. Reading provided her a gateway to other worlds, allowing her to broaden her perspective and expertise in the disciplines of both literary and business translation.