Bodies in literature always bear the first marks of difference. What isn’t recognized as “normal” (meaning, not perceived as male, cis, straight, white), always verges on the monstrous, to be rejected or feared, or at the very least cloaked in mystery.
In “Poem to Be Read From Right to Left,” recently published in the newest issue of Winter Tangerine, Helal comes up with a new poetic form: “the Arabic.”