This selection, chosen by guest editor JJ Rowan, is from about:blank by Tracy Fuad, released by University of Pittsburgh Press in 2022.
Slowly, I Learned to Pronounce the Language in the Language
wen Ay kaym heer wyth alunness payn was thaer yn tha pyth the kluth wayt untyl tumurruw nuthyng hapend untyl 4 u’cluk dun’t upen thys buks untyl Ay kum bak ∴ in a room in a garden in a photo in the water in the mountains in my mouth between winter and spring among the chairs on a Friday afternoon in summer in 2010 ∴ say: ل َي I say to you: يت دةل َيم You say to me: ئةوةم ثي بل َي
Tracy Fuad is a 2023 NEA Fellow and the author of about:blank, winner of the 2020 Donald Hall Prize. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in The Paris Review, POETRY Magazine, The Yale Review, and she is also the author of three chapbooks: PITH, DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD, and Body of Water 2. She lives with her family in Berlin, where she teaches poetry at the Berlin Writers’ Workshop.
JJ Rowan (they/them) is a queer nonbinary writer and dancer. Their poems, not-poems, and interactive performances have appeared in the tiny, Dream Pop Journal, 45th Parallel, and at the SMOL Fair and the Splinter Collective’s Interrupted by Trains, among others. Their most recent chapbook is a simple verb (Bloof Books). They are on the editorial team at just femme & dandy. You can sign up for their newsletter, actual motion, at their website.
