N.S. Ahmed

N.S. Ahmed is a first-generation Egyptian-American poet, playwright, fictional writer, and visual artist based in New York City. His work blends traditional Arabic storytelling, folktales, and songs with contemporary poetic and experimental forms to examine the lives, existential predicaments, and narratives of Arabic and Arabic-American people. His writings have been featured or are forthcoming in publications such as the Asian American Writer’s Workshop, Hyphen Magazine, New York Public Library, Voice and Verse Poetry Magazine, The Howling Press, PEN America, and the anthology DREAMing Out Loud. As well, he has held performances and conversations at the PEN World Voices Festival, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, TEDx Talk, Nuyorican Poets Café, The Poet’s Passage, among many other areas throughout the United States and abroad. Currently, Anes is a CUNY Pipeline Fellow, a CLS Scholar, Editor-in-Chief of the Olive Writers literary magazine, and a graduate with bachelor degrees in Creative Writing and Literature at the College of Staten Island.

DECEMBER POETRY: "A GHAZAL FOR BURYING MY FATHER" BY N.S. AHMED

I think often of the many ways we teach others how to treat us, whether or not we realize it. As I watch loved ones grow older, I wonder what they have already taught me in preparation for living without them, what aspects of their traditions I will continue after they are gone. Ahmed's poem allowed me to meditate on what we give back to those who have passed and what we will give to those who outlive us.

—Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello, Poetry Editor


A Ghazal For Burying My Father