Javeria Hasnain

Javeria Hasnain is a Pakistani poet and writer currently based in Brooklyn, NY. She is a Fulbright scholar in the MFA program at The New School, NY. Her poems and prose have appeared/are forthcoming in Poet Lore, GASHER, Isele, Mascara Literary Review, among others. She was a runner-up for the 2022 The Bird in your Hands prize and received an honorable mention in the 2022 Penrose Poetry Prize. She is an alum of the International Writing Program’s Summer Institute. She tweets @peelijay.

Poetry
Origin Story

Our people call each other muhajir.
(I am an immigrant in my own city.)

Poetry (translation)
CHESS

Get stuck or run forward.
Check.
Checkmate.

I take liberty with the translation and change some phrases to suit contemporary English poetry, whilst ensuring the meaning still carries.

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