IHRAM Press Literary Magazine Quarter 2 2025

AS WE DRIFT THROUGH 2025, we reflect on current global tragedies that have caused large forces of migration and displacement, discrimination, and inequality. This Second Quarter Literary Magazine is dedicated to those who have had to pack their bags for a new life, leaving their culture, family, and history behind; carrying hope and fear into a new land. The authors and artists in this edition join together from different corners of the world to reflect on forced migration, contemporary slavery, living undocumented, discrimination from society and state, human-trafficking, and deeply personal dreams for a better future. These evocative yet strong voices aim to inspire, shed light on realities, and create a representative space for suppressed and oppressed stories. As we move steadily into this year, I urge you to foster…

THE NIGHT DID NOT begin like any other because it was never meant to begin. It was merely an extension of yesterday that refused to die, stretching into today with the same heavy breath of asphalt and the same indifferent hum of fluorescent lights hanging above the docks. A place where time does not move forward or backward, only circles the same moment over and over again until the body forgets what rest feels like. Here, a name is a burden, and silence is the only currency that keeps someone from disappearing. The docks were lined with cargo crates stacked high enough to hide the sky, their rusted surfaces slick with the residue of old rain and salt from a sea that had long stopped being a promise. People moved…

Does the tree that grows on the border strip,have a homeland, I wonder?Do the birds who, without a passport,travel from one land to another—are they smuggled migrants, I wonder?The Earth,was once a beautiful woman.We drew plans for her;Her hair,we intertwined with barbed wire.We adorned her dress in the colors of a clown,and on her blue skirt,we burned fires.Then we spoke of freedom;Still, we speak of freedom.And a migrant childdrowns on the shores of Greece.We speak of freedom.And the news of a brother’s death in Iran,reaches his sister in Afghanistan. WE SPEAK OF FREEDOM. The birdsfrom one landto another, take flight.And one day, the wind,will lay that tree grown on the border strip,gently to rest in the embrace of the earth. This piece is inspired by Mohsen Hosseinkhani, the creator of…

RED CARDBOARD HEARTS. THAT’S what turned me into a Witness. That’s what turned a lot of people actually; and no, I’m not talking about a box of Valentine’s Day chocolates. It was Luna who first told me what was going down just an hour south of where we lived. She was like, “Blake, you’re so smart—how do you not know about this?” I anxiously popped my jaw, trying to think of a good answer. But I didn’t have one. As for who had introduced me to Luna, I have to give props to Little Socrates (a.k.a. the Little Soc), that two-story, rolling ladder labyrinth of new and used books. Luna and I ended up on a lot of closing shifts at the bookstore and after a couple of months, we…

Originally started in 2024 and continues to be an ongoing piece, the ADOPTION; HELD RANSOM series and the found poetry collage, THE ADOPTED ONE, uses cut-out words and phrases found in a multitude of printed materials. This deliberate visual style pays homage to the adoptees who were kidnapped, their birth families lied to, and then sold to predominantly white Christian countries in the West. The collages present complex issues we wrestle with and highlight the uphill struggle against the industrial adoption complex when wanting to find the truth.* At the center are copies of the artist’s own adoption records, where it clearly states her birth date is falsified. A list of physical features her adopters wrote out and desired is watermarked on her adoption photo, which were in direct contradiction…

This reality inspired the “Design and Doll, Buy a Child” collage, where cutouts of children’s heads with white doll bodies lay on top of made-up naturalization and birth certificates. With the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the dialogue describing adoption in this country has been promoting it as the solution to abortion. It is not. The loss of birth family, language, culture, ancestral roots, being raised and surrounded by people who do not look like us, and how we live in the different stages of adoptee consciousness are all part of this work—as is proving citizenship. The purpose of this work is to inform and offer an adoptee’s perspective that not everything is happily ever after once a “forever family” is found, nor should that be adoption’s primary purpose. After…