As the inaugural edition of the Kurdish Poetry Series, Selim Temo's Nightlands is translated by Zêdan Xelef & Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse from the Kurmanji, edited by Öykü Tekten, with an introduction by Zêdan Xelef.
 
Published in bilingual editions, the Kurdish Poetry Series is a first of its kind featuring only contemporary Kurdish poets whose work has never before appeared in English or was published only in a handful of anthologies and journals.
 
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the scarecrow in the sesame
 
the wind is my soul
my spine a Latin cross
i've sent the birds into sulk
my frayed hat never waves back
 
i am alone in the sesame
fallow and sown; dead neighbors
no one comes for company
but humming time and my emptiness
 
night belongs to itself
day to anyone
 
there is no hiding from fire