by Tala Khanmalek

If we know, then we must fight for your life as though it were our own—which it is—and render impassable with our bodies the corridor to the gas chamber. For, if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.

-James Baldwin

if they come for you they
come for me too in the dead

-Fatimah Asghar

inside the machine
my body registers
more than 30,000 political prisoners executed
i count them one by one

my body registers
hold a map for unmarked graves
i count them one by one
all pieces of me not pictured

hold a map for unmarked graves
to excavate the Human
all pieces of me not pictured
still i remain

to excavate the Human
inside the machine
still i remain
more than 30,000 political prisoners executed

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Tala Khanmalek is a writer, activist, and educator of Iranian descent. She was a Periplus Fellowship finalist, an Anaphora Arts fellow, and a Voices of Our Nations Arts (VONA) fellow; and is currently a Radius of Arab American Writers mentee. Her creative non-fiction and poetry have been featured or are forthcoming in It’s Lit with PhDJ podcast, Zoeglossia, Meridian, Barzakh, Indiana Review, and the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day.

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