Bayna Bayna --by Zeina Azzam

 Nonfiction / Poetry

The Poetry Box

2021, Chapbook

52 pages

5 stars

 

This impressive book takes us from her childhood in Palestine and war to adulthood in the US. She writes beautifully of loss—loss of friends, loss of home, loss of culture, loss of marriage. And yet these poems also give us hope, “may you wake up to goodness…” (Khayr, page 22.)

 

The title poem, Bayna Bayna, In-Between tells of living “…in the canyon / between a mother language / and an adopted tongue,” and that is the book. In between here and there. Between a marriage and a divorce, between one home and the second. Between one heart beat and the next.

 

Beautiful writing, highly recommend buying and reading this little book.