“Making love to an old man is like // Making love to a limp cornstalk blackened by fungus.”
This landai, or two-line poem, is from Afghanistan, written by a woman forced to marry an old man when she was 15.
Journalists Eliza Griswold and Seamus Murphy chronicled women’s use of poetry in Afghanistan. Read and see their work and more poems here.
It’s National Poetry Month. Send us your poems about the topics we cover or any haikus or poetry you find in our reporting, and we’ll post our favorites on our site. Email them to pulitzercenter (at) gmail (dot) com.
Photo: A landai in the notebook of a new young poet. Image by Seamus Murphy. Afghanistan, 2012.