Adi Magazine

Artwork by A. Gevegy Editor’s Note: Names have been changed to preserve privacy. On a Sunday in early March, I was sitting with friends in my living room, excitedly talking about Lebanon. I was going there in a few days’ time to spend a month visiting my family and friends and breathing some much-needed fresh air away from the oppressive political hypocrisy of Germany. My friends were going to visit me, and we discussed the sights we wanted to see.

Yassmin Abdel-Magied’s new book, At Sea (Pegasus Books, May 2026), has been described as a feminist eco-thriller, though upon reading it, I wonder what this means. What does it promise us to read those descriptors and how do those worlds alter each other, if they do at all? The main character, Zainab, is a witty high-achieving woman driller who receives a promotion as a toolpusher aboard an oil rig, making her one of the highest ranking members on the platform.

I first read Marjane Satrapi’s graphic memoir Persepolis while my loved ones hid from bombs. I was born in the north of Pakistan and, after a childhood of multiple migrations, came to live in New York City as an adult three months before the attacks of 9/11. Back in Pakistan, years of relentless suicide bombings, regime changes, assassinations, and drone attacks followed. I steeled myself regularly for news of devastation on the streets where I learned to walk.

Editor’s note: due to formatting, this poem is best viewed on a desktop. I.

In this conversation Ashia S. Ajani (Tending the Vines: Black Abundance in Eight Plants, Timber Press, 2026) and Beronda L. Montgomery (When Trees Testify: Science, Wisdom, History, and America’s Black Botanical Legacy, Henry Holt, 2026) discuss how engaging with the natural world can help us understand the past, navigate the present, and cultivate a future grounded in the rich tradition of insurgent Black ecological knowledge. Ashia S.

I keep letters and photos from past lives inside a small cardboard box. So does my mom. A little over a decade ago, when she retired, left the U.S., and moved into a much smaller apartment, she gave me hers to hold on to. Now I have two next to each other on my closet’s top shelf. I went into my own box recently looking for an old picture I could remember vividly: I must have been sixteen years old in it, with yellow Walkman headphones atop my head and long bangs that almost cover my eyes.

I am sad to the point where sadness can go no further— not a single drop left. It is purely physical really. Ask a sponge. This certainty came to me when my friend told me they would not let her see her son in Ofer prison except through a screen. Six hours she waited in a narrow room with hundreds of mothers and fathers, to see her son on a screen that could not see her. The lawyer warned her: Do not say a word, do not greet him, do not speak his name.

I write this while my toddler naps, splayed out innocently in deep sleep. We were playing outside when we heard the explosion. Missiles intercepted in the skies of Kuwait, over my parents’ garden. Bullet-shaped clouds, white puncturing blue. I am familiar with them now, three days into what feels like World War III. The first time I saw the sky riddled with missile-holes, my hands started shaking uncontrollably. I couldn’t crane my head high enough.

In the months leading up to President Soeharto’s resignation in May 1998 after more than three decades of authoritarian rule, Indonesia was gripped by a wave of protests as economic collapse and political unrest converged. Across university campuses and city streets, students mobilized, calling for reform. The state responded to them with intimidation, arrests, and violence, and many pro-democracy activists were abducted by state military forces; some of them never returned.

Artwork by Jinhwa Jang Permission credit: heidi andrea restrepo rhodes, “& you spill me out to fill me with light” and “& in the books of sadnesses” from Ampersand Organ: a more-than-human lyric. Copyright © 2026 by heidi andrea restrepo rhodes. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Milkweed Editions, milkweed.org. Filed under: Poetry | North America, United States