Poem of the Week | April 27, 2026

Jaz Sufi (she/hers) is a queer Iranian American poet and arts educator. Her work has been published or is upcoming in Best New Poets, Best of the Net, AGNI, Black Warrior Review, Muzzle, and elsewhere. Her debut chapbook, Catalog of Shadows, is forthcoming with Game Over Books. She is a National Poetry Slam finalist and has received fellowships from Kundiman, the Watering Hole, and New York University, where she received her MFA. She is the current poet laureate of San Ramon on occupied Ohlone land, where she lives with her dog, Apollo.

“Yeki Bood Yeki Nabood” by Jaz Sufi is our Poem of the Week.

***

Yeki Bood Yeki Nabood

In my youth, I lodged complaints
with the wrong authorities.
When my classmates chased me
with sticks held high as God,
I spoke with the sticks instead,
sure they would see my side
and turn against the hands
that held them. True, they flew
like the branches had burst
into birds, but the bruises
they left took the shape
of bruises I’d borne before.
Some from other boys; some
from myself, my own biggest bully.
This was back when my brain
had first started its buzzing,
honey to be fracked from its folds
and my small body a swarm.
I knew something was wrong,
and so, it seemed,
did everyone else. Cruelty was simply
the universe revising me into my place.
By the time I got to love, I was
a slammed door with a broken lock,
hanging open on my hinges
for anyone to enter. And then . . . 

***

Author’s Note

I wrote this poem as part of a greater project, a chapbook titled Catalog of Shadows, focused on intimate partner violence and codependence. Considering the emotional logic and chronology of the chapbook led me to consider the emotional logic and chronology of my relationship with abuse. As an adult, I don’t think often about having been bullied throughout my childhood, and so it was a surprise to realize that my abuse later in life was not, in fact, a surprise, that it echoed dynamics I had encountered before.