Issue 27 | Fall 2022

Spot

Rolla Barraq
Translated by Muntather Alsawad and Jeffrey Clapp

Hold the camera steady

zoom in

and if you want to go further

choose a different angle.

Make sure the light is right.

Maybe the shade out front

needs a spot of light.

All you can do next is press the button.

And that’s what you did—

you pressed it.

…

Bring back the rubble

and the children

and the houses

and the lost souls

and all the voices that fell silent

within that picture—

if you only could!

About the Author

Rolla Barraq was born in Mosul in 1985. In 2018, her poetry collection, What Has Arrived from It, won the competition of the General Union of Writers in Iraq. She has a PhD in Arabic literature and lives in Mosul, where she is leader of the Poetry Club.

About the Translators

Jeffrey Clapp’s poems, short stories and translations have appeared in Samovar, North American Review, Blue Unicorn, Dalhousie Review, Arkansas Review, Sycamore Review, and many others. He is a past recipient of the Daniel Morin Poetry Prize at UNH and the Indiana Fiction Prize from Purdue. His work has been anthologized in Best of Blueline and Like Thunder: Poets Respond to Violence in America. He currently lives in South Portland, ME.

Muntather Alsawad studied poetry and literary criticism in Iraq, where he taught in college and primary school, and published poetry and criticism of his own. A native of Basra, he currently lives in the cooler climate of Portland, ME, where he works at the Portland Museum of Art.