Make a Wish

If you could have one wish granted, would you ask for another? This poetry collection certainly would; it centers on the harshness of destruction, despair, and death while also daring to demand change for the better. Childhood cancer, the aftermath of divorce, sexual violence, and a teenage girl’s disappearance haunt these poems, while desire and love and the sweetness of simple mornings triumph. Sarah E. Azizi’s Make a Wish invites you into richly sensual poems rendered in such textured detail that you’ll feast upon chocolates, smell iron in the blood, and relish the coolness of silk on flesh. Magic, these poems remind us, resides in the wishing, for hope is a force that conquers even the most cruel acts and harrowing memories. Read Make a Wish and ask for more.

ISBN: 978-1-942004-88-2

$18.00

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Praise for Make a Wish

In this enthralling, important debut, Sarah E. Azizi presents “poems that fight death to the edge / of the page.” Make a Wish introduces us to a single mother taking pride in the teenaged daughter who survived leukemia as a toddler, a lover basking in a panoply of lusty sexual experiences, a queer elder nostalgic for the time lesbians had their own bars, a friend relishing the company of others in her home, and a middle-aged woman fascinated by the changes to her body. Featuring poems as tough as they are tender, this collection explores harrowing personal trauma and large-scale injustices, but never at the expense of celebrating the small and large joys of being alive and the blessing of having “an after.” In poem after poem, gratitude asserts its powerful presence, alongside the “necessary belief / that something good— / something better— / could happen next.” When the poet promises that she is “never going to shut the fuck up,” I cheered—Azizi’s is a voice I want to hear more of. Make a Wish leaves us wishing to reread it and craving what comes next. I love this book!

—Marisa P. Clark, author of Bird

In Make a Wish, Sarah Azizi confronts her inner angels and demons with brutal, affecting honesty. This is a fierce, brave book that does not flinch as it confronts the joys and perils of motherhood, the grave illness of a child, and the speaker’s own evolving sexuality. These are not poems for the fainthearted, and yet throughout Azizi is convincing in her belief in “…this wondrous life, mundane/ and precious, all at once.”

—Elizabeth Spires, author of A Memory for the Future and Worldling

Sarah E. Azizi deftly explores “The uncharted territory / of our bodies” in this exhilarating debut. Simultaneously intimate and expansive, Make a Wish grapples with the joyous, terrifying complexity of being embodied, from a daughter’s cancer, to sexuality, to a friend whose disappearance haunts the book. These poems are humane and sharp-edged, shaped by desire and loss. Azizi writes “poems that leave / lingering stains” and will have you craving more.

—Izzy Wasserstein, author of These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart

In the opening poem of Make a Wish, Sarah Azizi writes, “I love/ finishing something off,” but when her young daughter is diagnosed with leukemia, she must reconsider a way of life that has gotten her this far. The poems, bold and unflinching, are at their best when their music aligns with the moment: “here it comes, the trigger’s/ firing from the proverbial gun. I’m on guard,/ adrenaline so thick. I fear I’ll outlive everyone.” The poems also sing through repetition and wordplay, as when she writes, “I will take, I will/ take you. I will/ take care of you.” Eventually, the speaker reconsiders her earlier position on endings, “Let me be everything children/ are until they’re taught differently.” When she finds her place in the world, a place to share with her daughter and a community of friends, it feels like a wish has been granted; her child survives. In “Summer Party,” the mother welcomes a throng of friends, each bearing gifts, until there is such abundance, she must attend to it. “I’d say more,” the poem ends, “but someone’s/ calling my name, someone is at the door—”

—Blas Falconer, author of Rara Avis

In Make a Wish, Sarah Azizi writes to “rip off the band-aid of taboo.” She invites us to sift through our mysteries and memories alongside matchboxes, sugar & spice, the touch of silk on skin, out of sight knives, hope and motherhood embraced, and the mundane gardens we happily tend. Her lush poems also affirm what it means “to be in & of this world” of desire, hunger, and sexuality. She gives voice and release to the fragile, abused, neglected, and the witness, carefully reminding us that our bodies are precious and “not meant to be camouflaged.”

—Juan J. Morales, author of The Handyman’s Guide to End Times

About the Author

Sarah E. Azizi was born in Shiraz, city of poets and roses, during the last hour of July in 1976. Two years later, she arrived in the United States. Sarah received her BA from Goucher College; since 2002 she’s lived in New Mexico, where she snagged an MFA and has rooted herself as a queer activist and educator. Her work has appeared in Blue Mesa Review, Fahmidan Journal, Nine Mile, The Coop, Honey Literary, Emerge Literary Journal, Free State Review, Rattle,and other wonderful publications. Sarah has had poems anthologized in Rituals from Bell Press and Not Ghosts but Spirits from Querencia Press. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart. Sarah’s debut collection, Make a Wish, is available now from ELJ-Editions. She lives with her daughter, among friends, family of choice, and piles of unfinished work. Follow her all over: @SEAziziWrites.

Make a Wish

Praise for Make a Wish

About the Author

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