Maryam Ivette Parhizkar
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miparhizkar.bsky.social
Maryam Ivette Parhizkar
@miparhizkar.bsky.social
310 followers 210 following 52 posts
Poet/writer, scholar of 20/21c hemispheric aesthetics, literature & culture, periodic editor & translator, member of Central American diaspora collective Tierra Narrative.
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miparhizkar.bsky.social
“Dear Republic,” by William Archila. From the book S IS FOR (Black Lawrence Press, 2025).

“Who are they, in their elegant decay, the marble souls of their children / bothered by my presence, in their perfect pitch & breed, still hungry?”
Text of DEAR REPUBLIC by William Archila I want to tell you every argument against disappearing should be turned over & exposed. What matters most is the invention of our unbearable presence. I want to live there in the middle of its own well, a gleaming light devoted to clarity. There must be something inside, something like oxygen settling over the gravesites & stones, enough to climate the weather fit for a ghost, my boy's umbilical cord. There's nothing here to change but the mind of a block. There must be something else outside. This is half you, half my invisibility formed. Half my struggle to construct my ark, my family with petals curling on the dark day of my birth. Only I can do it mediocrely, fail miserably, with fingers wide, limbered pull out the cartography of earth. Is it my body? Is my river a ruined narrative? Sometimes I feel haunted by the very margins of my story. You can see the trace & pause in my walking. Who are they, in their elegant decay, the marble souls of their children bothered by my presence, in their perfect pitch & breed, still hungry?
February 26, 2025 at 3:29 AM
miparhizkar.bsky.social
The original: "El muerto universal," Julia de Burgos.

"Hombre vivo, detente de tu orgia de metrallas;
por un instante mirate en mi rostro de espanto;
soy el más gigantesco de los muertos, que nunca
te cerrará los ojos hasta verte salvado."
El muerto universal ¿Y quien soy yo? ¿Que busco por la orilla del hombre? ¿Dónde fue que cai? ¿Con qué enseña arropado? ¿Y ese inmenso horizonte de sepulcros que marchan? ¡Todos los muertos quieren una ruta en mi paso! Hombre vivo, detente de tu orgia de metrallas; por un instante mirate en mi rostro de espanto; soy el más gigantesco de los muertos, que nunca te cerrará los ojos hasta verte salvado.
February 17, 2025 at 5:49 PM
miparhizkar.bsky.social
Today, on the birthday of Julia de Burgos––Puerto Rican civil rights activist and namesake of the cultural center where I work––a poem translated by Jack Agüeros: for "The Universal Dead."
Text screenshot from a book of Julia de Burgos's translated poem "The Universal Dead": And who am I? What do I look for at the edge of man? Where did I fall? Wrapped in what ensign? And that immense horizon of marching sepulchres? All the dead want a passage in my steps!
February 17, 2025 at 5:45 PM
miparhizkar.bsky.social
"Before," by Amada Libertad, tr. Yvette Siegert.
BEFORE I used to run through the streets and sing in the morning and scream in the evening and commit my sabotage at night. No this wasn’t a routine it was one of the many ways I showed my opposition to pain it was how I drew close to my dead and our love of peace a love we weave day by day with the pain of so many.
January 9, 2025 at 5:03 PM
miparhizkar.bsky.social
Very excited to share an editorial project that has been published digitally by Fence Magazine:

"'I celebrate my permanence in the eye of the beast': six women writing from El Salvador," spanning the years of the Salvadoran civil war through the present.
fenceportal.org/six-women-wr...
“El sueño de la razón” (2008), Myra Barraza. A drawing of a woman's head on an otherwise blank piece of paper, placed off center, laying prone and staring toward the viewer.
January 7, 2025 at 3:37 PM
miparhizkar.bsky.social
Grateful for the little messages students leave behind for one another at work.
A whiteboard that reads “Si vale la pena mi gente!” / “it’s worth it, my people!” in front of a window during daylight.
November 20, 2024 at 5:57 PM
miparhizkar.bsky.social
Screenshot of an instagram reel by @wizard_bisan of a protest of children in Gaza. A closeup of a boy holding up a handwritten sign on cardboard which reads, in English, “Mr. Biden / our blood and the American pilot Aron Bushnell blood / is a ghost will follow you.” The caption of the video reads “The demands of Gaza children…”
February 28, 2024 at 2:56 PM
miparhizkar.bsky.social
My dear friend David Henderson— poet, educator, Umbra co-founder, beloved Lower East Side denizen—is facing some significant challenges and needs a lot of help right now. Please support if you can.

www.spotfund.com/story/a330c8...
September 7, 2023 at 4:30 PM