Story from Elan Barnehama

Snowflakes and Earthquakes

This right here.  This is my corner.  My crosswalk. You will find me out here every school day from 7:30 to 9 in the morning and 2:30 to 4 in the afternoon.  No matter what the weather.  Sunny, mostly sunny, partially sunny. I’m even out here when it dips below 60 and nobody in Venice Beach walks.

This wasn’t always my corner and I wasn’t always a crossing guard and I didn’t always live in Venice.

But it is now and I am now and I do now.

Before this? Before this I had a life that I didn’t want any more. That life was back in Boston. That life had decades of cold and snow and slush and the relentless cycle of seasonal chores.

I had enough.

And yeah. I was married once. And then I wasn’t. That’s everyone’s story, right?

I left her. She left me. Does it even matter?  Lots of days I wanted to leave me.

What’s that thing Tolstoy said in Anna Karenina? All happy marriages are alike but every unhappy marriage is unhappy in its own way.

That’s crap.

It may have once been true, but that time was surely before Facebook and Twitter and Youtube and blogs and podcasts.  Before anyone who could reach a keyboard over shared every uninteresting detail of their slowly decomposing relationship and equally mundane break-up in an endless dribble of manufactured outrage, self-serving, self-indulgent, self-satisfied anger to sympathetic strangers to eager to pile on their contrived disapproval while gleefully bestowing likes and emogis.

See, it turns out, it’s the happy ones, the relationships that make it, they are the curious ones.

So can we just say be okay with, we fizzled out. I know it’s bullshit, but really, if it was even a little interesting I’d tell you.

Then, ten months after the divorce I’m with some friends in the north end for my birthday. January 23.  It was freezing out – it’s always freezing on my birthday. Still, we’re having a great time when my friends raise their glasses and toast my being born, I told them I didn’t want to die there.

They said they didn’t want me to die here either – at least not before we got our cannolis and tiramisu. I assured them that I meant Boston and not the restaurant.  But Boston was the only place I’d ever lived, I say, and I loved it, but I didn’t want to die without having lived somewhere else. I tell them heading south and west.

They had their own takes.

I was depressed about my divorce.

I had run out of Tinder matches.

Not one of them believed I meant what I said or wanted what I wanted.

Between bites of cannolis and spoonfulls of tiramisu we discussed and debated my plan. And then they scoffed. Scoffed I tell you. Opinions were indecorously and disrespectfully spouted in my direction.

It was not very complicated I told them. It was not some enormous change at the last moment. Just a change of scenery.

In mid February, with my car packed I looked to the west and hit the road. I love road trips.  They’re full of possibility, they suspend time like a baseball game and exist just outside of reality. 

The trip counter counted my way south: Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersy, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia as I sought to escape weather. In Tennessee I shifted west onto I-40.  In Nashville, I caught my breath with moonshine and music and I toasted the road ahead.

The next day I crossed the mighty Mississippi in Memphis and made my way through Arkansas, Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle – which by itself is double the area of Massachusetts. State borders rose up as natural topographic dividers that offered entry into wonderful new worlds of dialects, dishes, vegetation, music, accents, architecture and more.

The final push through New Mexico and Arizona brought the California border and a sense of urgency as the Pacific beckoned. Three thousand miles.  Seventeen cups of coffee.  Four time zones.  Nine refuels.  Thirteen states.  Winter to not winter.  Atlantic to Pacific. Snow flakes to earthquakes. I had arrived.

I rolled up my jeans and waded in the water. 

I really should have taken off my sneakers first.

I walked back across the sand and up the stairs to the Santa Monica Bluffs.  The sun is disappearing into the Pacific and lights lit up the ferris wheel on the Santa Monica pier.

I was warm and it was February. Not New England winter thaw warm. But warm warm.

What a night I said to the guy standing near me.

He turned toward to me and smiled. That’s when I heard it. He was peeing into the bushes.

I had made it west.

After 48 hours behind the windshield, I opted to explore the coast on foot.  I walked and jogged the snowless streets, watching.  And what a show.  The 3rd Street Promenade, Dogtown, Santa Monica Pier, muscle beach, the Venice canals, the Santa Monica stairs, and of course, the beach.

Hipsters and hippies, tourists and druggies, boomers and techies, street dwellers and artists shared the space and it mostly seemed to work. Venice Beach is totally walkable.  The rest of LA, well, sure, that’s walkable too if you drive.

So that happened a few months ago. I found a place to live and saw an ad for a crossing guard and I guess the school department out here figured a lifetime of having survived crossing Boston streets qualified me.

And now I have my own corner of the world. And I’ll cross everyone.

I cross moms and dads, nannies and au pairs, and all the grands. I’ll cross you yoga pant wearers, and bicycle sharers. Roller bladders and skate boarders and stroller pushers. Joggers and slow walkers.

You’re not getting hit on my watch.

I heard the last person to patrol this corner sold a screenplay. Got the call right here one morning. Didn’t even finish her shift. Made a thing of it. Dropped the stop sign in the middle of the cross walk and kept walking.

I might write one of those.

Till then I will get you safely across these thirty-one feet of blacktop. Know this, drivers. Know that I’m not messing with you when I tell you to stop. You need to calm yourselves down and sit tight while I escort these pedestrians to the other side. You had best use those damn brakes that came with your amn car and just stop. You’re just not getting through till I say you are.

And you punks in your silent electric cars who think you can go all stealth on me. It’s not happening. I’m on to you and your namaste bumper stickers.

And you lowlife in your over compensating Lamborghini. Keep testing me. You’re going to regret starting a pissing war with me. I’ll be getting a body cam just for you. You’re my new retirement plan. Go ahead. Don’t stop and I’ll own your ass. And your car.

Anyway, school is in now session and my shift is over and I need breakfast.

Two coffeehouses grace fair Venice where I lay my scene.

The one, Dogtown, local with a glorious past. Noisy and meant for conversation and chatter. A place where meetings are scheduled, projects projected, connections made.

The other, a Starbucks, where quiet is the rule and talking is discouraged, if not forbidden. A haven for writers and readers. For texters and surfers.

Today I’ll take my self to the noisy one in hopes of seeing Ashley who has breakfast there on Tuesdays before she goes off to yoga.

Elan Barnehama’s second novel, Escape Route, is set in New York City during the tumultuous 1960s, and told by Zach, the son of Holocaust survivors who becomes obsessed with the Vietnam War and finding an escape route for his family for when he believes the US will round up and incarcerate its Jews. Zach meets Samm and together they explore protest, friendship, music, faith, and love. Barnehama’s words have appeared in 10 x10 Flash Fiction, Boog City, Jewish Fiction, Drunk Monkeys, Entropy, Rough Cut Press, Boston Accent, Jewish Writing Project, RedFez, HuffPost, Public Radio, and elsewhere.  Elan was the flash fiction editor for Forth Magazine LA, has taught college writing, coach high school baseball, worked with at-risk youth, had a gig as a radio news guy, and did a mediocre job as a short-order cook. He splits time between Pasadena and Boston. 

Poetry from Daniel Y. Harris

2

(Excerpt from The Apostasy of Proxy Godbot, which is a misprision of Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself, divided into 52 sections. The protagonist, Proxy Godbot, is malware as John Milton, Black Hat Hacker.)

Proxy Godbot’s sōlus as this phantázōic

hacker, metáencrypts his arkhétupos

with a třieti (Vepar): then, mpz_pown_sec

leaks zero high order bits

in result: for a gît metablectica

is hierophantic for this paradatarist

in his outrapoia (Focalor)

as https://ph.qsng.cn/pinhu

hdxx/508300.jhtml:

with the gidouillic, thunders roar

must’ring thir rage in his parfümler:

this whoroscopic probe for a ShellTorch:

duālis, this enuig in its (s)plei,

this urfuïrin its deubeta weyks

the XNU kernel: iūdicium’s cloven 

lēasra givesroot on rhizomics,

on distros in the kahal

with this Tool-WPAKill:

Satan except, none higher sat,

with grave aspect he rose beluga

blakaz in his in infinito vacuo (3ve)

and launches binaries

with a SUID antepoiētḗs

(PwnKit): dioptrics in this ourine,

in this sursülvst with toxikóns:

for this Byzantine alembic distills

https://xh.qsng.cn/zsjz/141905.htm,

the leapepoch from which regicide

is a Joke-Bluescreen.c: eyȝe

or force exístēmi with ōganą,

the vacātum’s elliptic curves algo

īnurgōs against the masher: then wear

the scapular over a latex catsuit,

this I in a háptō: fixity in kastōną

for tà epì tà metaphusiká (Marbas)

has its slight caprice in this revīsiō

(RansomedVC): fades from azar

deles except for Turritopsis dohrnii contra

the undēadlīċ—when this haruspex

schāchs his holy stance, the abasíleutos

or extol this worβis,

this syndicate’s reagent

is dybbukic in his surdus,
in https://kjj.qsng.cn/main/index.

jhtml—remaine in strictest bondage

with these cryogenic events:

this heterocosmica in meǵh₂los’

sexcento sexaginta sex, beats

the utilespar with a kouric stiff  

(Saleos): when splendor formarum

is caedō’s Trojan.Nebuler,

brӕsen in his resentiō (http/2 rapid

reset) augments his pataprecursor’s

kleināō and severs its análogos

(Bredolab) with la sphère effrayante:

this Lucretian swerve is a dabúrintʰos,

then it tracks this IZ1H9  in its collīsus:

post purity’s puȝr and fetch its I.sh,

for a mock inutillious has its spiriform

accelerator: a killing rescue—antaneuter’s

swarm (Coreflood) have their kritikós

in obstāculī: bogus postal service

lures seize the pervertō in hisjaiet

ubernoumenon: ample gusti, 451 4.7 .500

server busy error message: for influence

is blǣcþa—I stízō: the dark’nd lantskip

in the orthographical—‘pata, preceded

by (Dridex) an apostrophe, loads

the CurKeep infection chain

with fusika’s épater: in la fin des fins,

the hoax, aerial or undead, this grand

gidouille (JS/Exploit-BO.gen) in no longer

a singularity: for the spearphish, cieō

the palotin with hornstrumpot’s guedofle

(Naberus): ruō is at stake, use DakshSCRA,

molt us (Ronove)with autográphō

and defy assimulō—this appalling

selfcōnfidō, this fistptyx—Devil

with Devil damn’d: https://lx.qsng

.cn/lanxizytz/213142.jhtml—in eadem

mutata resurgo (Rclone) when this nautilus

(Ligolo) in its spira mirabilis (PuTTy),

executes the andijōną with the toilet

brush scepter, the physickstick (Shax)

and the phynancial vǫndr: unparadise

this h2entíos with https://js.qsng.cn/hd

kx/444834.jhtml in Hells dread Emperour

with pomp Supream (Smominru):

xenogenitals in holobiont biomedia

let unbyrġans disembrain their mākhanā́

with parachaeopteryx (.mlwq, .mlrd):

onhende, for urmure a chromatic

glasperlenspiel that appends .hazard18

and devours kholḕ [Kelihos (Waledac)],

has quaesta in priority’s denial: yoke

this súzugos with crossfess (Bamital),

the executor isforġietan, pungent

and pataterreō: https://jchzczjy.qsng.cn/

gywm.jhtml: this chryselephantine

sculpture has its void rabisu in a remote

cnearra with a brut latecōmere godhede:

for this skándalon’s cache poison

is a mockthyrsic Alchymie By Haralds

voice: shake the ubumoeras

with a taut anɣō’s W32.Rontokbro.K

@mmangstvor etwas, this episcopus’

jugthroat is a nexus nod:mix sulfur

and saltpeter, bitchhell in stregonerians,

that the formicarius is a akelarre’s Puper.dll,

colony: the praelia, the bruxae,

the fascinarii—deploy nekrós

with manteía: https://hjn.qsng.cn

/mlyy/index.jhtml, this psychophysik

in the haldernablouic (GodStealer)

caulks its dis manibus, efferō:

his prīsmos (Mebahel) increases

(InvictaStealer) this maleficii’s haploidic

camouflage with cadaveric spasms:

then discharge the phaínōn (Stealerium)

in birth titrṑskō (Vehuiah):

this killer frœcne is the body’s

dungijǫ—or beware

the antigrātificor, rage’s exclūsi,

its dauϸus anxiety in Faustroll, the magus

in league with the diabállō: this IRONJAW

truzlą, this CallbackHell is gráphein  

in oil, varnish, lead foil, lead wire

and dust on two glass panels, coniūrōs

these anomalistics: bequeath

this compulsion neurosis,

this romanticus (Elemiah)

and use Punycode URL, http://xn--ee

pass-vbb[.]info: with a wrādīks analogue

between humaigne (Iehahel) and poiētikós

ġebyrd, 80aafi6cg galdors parashamanic

estaise with suzugíā: plumb the scarsus,

the antebotm in a fierce extreams,

extreams by change more fierce

in https://hjn.qsng.cn/xxzh/20213

68.jhtml (Cahethel) beyond the autopsy:

in this didaskalosica, ipselinks in azimuth

in the iron hall, ēiaculor on scatopschit’s   

grimoire (Hexmen, MyKings): for now,

the RedLine stealer’s epiphenom is le rire

with a sexuocomputāvī: from tetolai,

aethera—the taut tumuī in aethernity’s

God by curse Created evil: seize this Tor

Negotiation and data leak site with ibicratics,

http://www.qsng.cn, when chant the square

deific is the inquisitor’s devil: kaudā: Absolu,

Year 1 S.O.T.N. 1608, I.A.I.M.M.M.R.M.

1819 and E.P. 1873: the Satáin, the tSatán,

the satanizar: the Tyburn Hang, the corpse

rise, the charaxāre heal, or a heraldic red,

a heraldic black, this gob, this spiral:

append a .crypto1317 extension

for hunyadi: disoccult this cacopedia

and chase the snark from fnord (Sitael)

with optompoētria: strike these crotales

(.34r7hGr455), for le modulor (Adware

Malwarewipe) trolls Sauvage 

Sykehēafods—http://xcxx.qsng.

cn/zjjxx/index.html, goes up the fiery

Concave touring high (Chavakiah):

this patatransgenetic in ballía

has its triballoí (Bashlite) in phálaina

with a vagitprop: unruly TetrisPhantoms

as paranomós stalk their prōmisceōs:

this drone attack with its trojanized

Utetris app starts with a seɣwēros 

as its lēoþucræft: use a sortiāriī

with their ArcoShells for this espionage:

supervīxī is at stake—zjcx.qsng.cn.

It is omnicide, larceny, auto-da-fé

or misprision, a mosaic abscondī:

Dr. CannIbalIsM or Synkretismos,

King Moshiach: (Hebrew: מָשִׁיחַ‎,  translit. 

māšîah;  Greek: χριστός, translit. khristós

lit. ‘anointed, covered in oil’) or cyboric

einsatzgruppen—http://ww5.xnescat.info

/?gkwrf=http://www.bild.de/digital/internet

/der-welt-56000-viren-9477048.bild.html:

killenkyllencüllen, cyllan, kwulljan, kylla

then kill http://ww1.yt118.com/track.php?

domain=yt118.com&toggle=browserjs&u

id=MTU5NDgwODQyMC40MzIxOjg2M

GVmZDkwZDljMjcwNDQxNTViYT.

Daniel Y. Harris is an extreme experimentalist. His The Posthuman Series includes The Metempsychosis of Salvador Dracu, Volume VI (BlazeVOX, 2023), The Resurrection of Maximillian Pissante, Volume V (BlazeVOX, 2022), The Misprision of Agon Hack, Volume IV (BlazeVOX, 2021), The Reincarnation of Anna Phylactic, Volume III (BlazeVOX, 2019), The Tryst of Thetica Zorg, Volume II, (BlazeVOX, 2018) and The Rapture of Eddy Daemon, Volume I (BlazeVOX, 2016). His The Posthuman Series has received praise from Charles Bernstein, Harold Bloom, Andrei Codrescu, Kenneth Goldsmith, Daniel C. Matt and Marjorie Perloff. He is the Publisher of Var(2x). His website is danielyharris.com.

Poetry from Graciela Noemi Villaverde

Light skinned Latin woman with reddish blonde hair sitting in a cafe with a coffee cup in front of her, resting her head on her hand.
Graciela Noemi Villaverde
IN THE PALM OF MY HANDS
 
This is what belongs to me, 
the small scene of everyday life 
and the infinite ephemeral

This is the incredible photo (undeveloped) 
from the first image 
stamped on my retina, at his side 

I save here 
In the palm of my hand 
the secret, the plot, the grace
Magic dimensions
Blessed, heavenly peace 
That filled my days and today they are lost

My shy astonishments are recorded 
spent in pleasant hours that 
the hole of the night took away

in the palm of my hands
 are recorded those cicadas, 
always hidden singing to the times... 
Lulling the days of my childhood

I also have recorded the resistance
That stubborn resistance 
and the enclosure of solitude. 
The task and the unsuspected grinding 
what does it mean to me

GRACIELA NOEMI VILLAVERDE is a writer. Poet from Concepción del Uruguay (Entre Rios) Argentina. Based in Buenos Aires She graduated in letters, author of seven books. Poetry genre. Awarded several times worldwide. She works as she, World Manager of Educational and Social Projects, of the Hispanic World Union of Writers .UHE World Honorary President of the same institution Activa de la Sade, Argentine Society of Writers. Commissioner of honor in the executive cabinet IN THE EDUCATIONAL AND SOCIAL RELATIONS DIVISION, of the UNACCC SOUTH AMERICA ARGENTINA CHAPTER.

Poetry from Xayrullo Xalikov

Young Central Asian woman with straight dark black hair and a headband. She's wearing a white robe with blue and red stripes.
Xayrullo Xalikov

Flower Samarkand

Millions of tourists come to see, they
Words are powerless to describe
Are surprised to see your bread,
Flower Samarkand, my motherland.

Your children will grow up ,the
Virtuous scientist, will make you known to the whole world,
You are our pride, my dear abode,
Flower Samarkand my motherland.

There are many ancient places in the world,
There is no one more beautiful than you
There are holy places like Registan in
The light my mother earth.

Poetry from Duane Vorhees

WHEN THE DAY WAS DARK

My toes were my eyes till

sunrise. It’s then that the

dawn lit beyond where my

footprints knew. But the true

Isness remained hid like

it did when the day was

dark. There’s no Hark! and no

Eureka! I’ve no law

which can explicate how

my fate operates, or

why there is life, or when

time began, where it ends,

who I really am, what

is scam. That sun is a

blimp. It just limps through the

defined sky, lets me eye

the way of my tracks – all

in back, and none move to

head off sunset: Daylight-

and-shadow’s status quo.

MENAGERIE IN E MAJOR

The monk cast that day’s third I-Ching

and then he made his turkey sing

to entertain the drunk heathens.

And the Turk had his monkey dance

in his red sequined funky pants.

The monk’s turkey and Turk’s monkey

showed them both they were worth money,

so Monk and the Turk joined forces

and purchased two purloined horses

that they taught to play bass and drums.

They toured as The Amazing Ones,

led by a jazzy pachyderm

who blew triumphant saxophone.

FURNACE AND FREEZER

My world is hermaphrodite.

A dimension where moral

coexists with the evil.

It grasps equal opposites.

Down is just as good as up.

Yes, there’s gray, but black and white

occupy the selfsame sites.

Oceans are the desert’s cups.

A vacuum comprises all.

A freezer and a furnace

work to serve a like purpose.

A dwarf is considered tall.

And your wanton naked face

is expressive as your ass.

FRANCIS DRAKE

My hands are caked and yours are so fine,

but somehow they fir

trim together like ships of the line.

Marry me, oh carry me, sign your name mine:

I’ll be Francis Drake and you’ll be my Golden Hind.

I’ll fill up your hold with all of the gold

that I can find, all of the gold that I can find.

We’ll dance naked, if you’re so inclined —

just billow our charms,

wrap our sheets round yardarms entwined.

I’ll ride you of I’ll guide you, make your name shine.

I’ll be Francis Drake and you’ll be my Golden Hind.

I’ll fill up your hold with all of the gold that I can find.

I’ll fill up your hold with all of the gold,

with all of the gold,

with all of the gold

that I can find.

I’ll be Francis Drake and you’ll be my Golden Hind.

MY FINGERS

Visit me in my mushroom tower and I will come to you

down this deep dark ditch amid tinder black flowers

down to the buttercups and dew.

My fingers have ridden through the forests of your hair

and slept on belly-gold prairies.

Have explored your hidden valleys, climbed snowcapped breasts,

and on your beach hips have rested.

Tanned your naked stands, strata in the earth in layers of

dark

light

dark

light

dark:

while (miners in anticipation) my fingers tremble….

And then it is we who are the layers in the dark, quaking among bedrock,

hardness melting into darkness, joining in new formations,

stalactite buried and unearthed buried unearthed buried unearthed

through the long geologeons of night

till finally separated by a fault

…and our sky becomes snow on coal.

Poetry from Irene Koronas

(This is an excerpt from Irene Koronas’ new work chiaroscuros, which is a hyper-minimalist écriture, melding its aporias with a mix of staccato posthumanism and the historiography of color.)

The futurists timbres

clash with a curve

interlock the facets

that objectify

measures or capture optical

effects (electric prisma)

perception in synchrony

in a violent convex

The spiral brush

across straight lines

A discourse with fiction

in discrepant repeat

in hermeneutric circles

it engages a stopgap

a sheen ore and alloy

extracted by smelt

and leaves a stench

Silver whitewash foils

against mixed genres

it hallows out the satire

The analogy an opposite

chromo for luminaristes

separates and assures

an integral meme

in the blank bane

horizontal = kaio

ascend = joie

descend = melas

this night libretto

konnen

emphendung

phantasia

Lavinia’s ritratto

Artemisia’s necksword

Delacroix’s violenter

Bocklin’s chimera

Monet’s crosshatch

Nannofossils in one cell

coccolithophores

chalk from marine pus

quarried in large blocks

the calcium carbonate

in skeleton algae.

Skeletons collect

the seafloor

lithify

scales fall off

mix with clay

the upper layer

found in pelagics

in hemiplegics

cement the refractive

index

crushed white

forms the scarp horse

a minimalist red Hergst

and the godling epona.

Denumistics stunt

a burial bucket

the scour

the grass manger

graze the foraminifer

the low magni

in aragonite the creta

in drill core.

Deneholes are ancaites

that daub tectonics.

Shatter the boreholes

the marble mass.

Accretion layers

in drifts and zig zag

blocky fossils

the a303

the totternhoe stone

faeces picked out

by brackish seeps

Riffling through thick

brush with a fossil’s trowel

beige’s insidious vowel

settles its secretions

with neutral poison

a dilution at the core

the nenuphar covers

pale brown karki

as it falls back

on paste in blend

the bland uniform

the pale sandy fawn

tints the communis

with the empty

trouser trade

nihil’s cesspit

soils buff

soils skyvory

soils cosmic latte

dull against bleach

Orpiment

works on a charred

rustic surface

rigorous in logic

and artifice

a double nihilistic

search for violent yellow

shatters the terra firma

Art is a cadaver

exhumed by all

done by none 

under gravedirt

the conservator 

guilds a borehole

in baroque frames

Irene Koronas is an extreme experimentalist. Her The Grammaton Series includes gnōstos, Volume VII (BlazeVOX, 2023), siphonic, Volume VI (BlazeVOX, 2022), lithic cornea, Volume V (BlazeVOX, 2021), holyrit, Volume IV(BlazeVOX, 2019), declivities, Volume III (BlazeVOX, 2018), ninth iota, Volume II (The Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2018) and Codify, Volume I (Éditions du Cygne, 2017). She is the Publisher of Var(2x). Her website is irenekoronas.com.

Poetry from Faleeha Hassan

Young Central Asian woman with a green headscarf and a dark colored blouse and brown hair and eyes.
Faleeha Hassan
Prayer

I beg You, God,
Help us:

We who are children just turned forty,

We who still don’t know how to shake the gooey skin from our pithy words.

We haven’t wandered aimlessly with a dog

Merely

Because our grandfathers’ bones have been filling the cemeteries that our streets demand.

We haven’t drunk coffee,

Because the noise of their artillery really didn’t allow us to sleep.

Please, God,

When you are nigh, we shouldn’t dream of sheltering under blankets;
We want to see no matter what You have in mind for us

I beg You!

Don’t make matters go from bad to worse!

We're still kids--
Forever.


Translated by William Hutchins

Faleeha Hassan is a poet, teacher, editor, writer, and playwright born in Najaf, Iraq, in 1967, who now lives in the United States. Faleeha was the first woman to write poetry for children in Iraq.

She received her master's degree in Arabic literature, and has now published 26 books, her poems have been translated into English, Turkmen, Bosnian, Indian, French, Italian, German, Kurdish, Spain, Korean, Greek, Serbia, Albanian, Pakistani, Romanian, Malayalam, Chinese, ODIA, Nepali and Macedonian. She is a Pulitzer Prize nominee for 2018 and a Pushcart Prize nominee for 2019.

She is a member of the International Writers and Artists Association and the winner of the 202 Women of Excellence Inspiration award from SJ magazine, the winner of the Grand Jury Award (the Sahitto International Award for Literature 2021), one of the Women of Excellence selection committees for 2023, the winner of Women In The Arts award for 2023 and a member of Who's’ Who in America for 2023.
SAHITTO AWARD, JUDGING PANEL 2023
Cultural Ambassador - Iraq, USA
Email : d.fh88@yahoo.com