‘Testimony of Nadia Murad’
— Andrew Sargus Klein
Before you read this small, terrifying poem, you’ve already taken in its shape—a cloud, a wave length. Its symmetry belies the content.
The poem begins, “They arrived and told / us if we convert we could live,” and crescendos into illegibility as more and more lines of text are stuffed together in the middle of the poem. Stray phrases like “stay downstairs” and “part of me changed in their hands” hang onto the limits of readability. The text calms down, evens out, and leaves you with the reminder that no matter how close poetry brings us to terrible truth, it can only bring us to the edge of understanding.
For yet another angle of entry into the poem, I would recommend listening to the poet’s recording.