Jenny Sadre-Orafai reads and signs from her new poetry collection, Malak.

Malak is consumed with magic and safety from impending doom and a Persian grandmother’s hobby of predicting one’s future by reading coffee grounds. Sadre-Orafai explores the effects dreams and superstitions can have on people when futures are predicted, signs are translated, and language is contested. The poems excavate the past to make sense of loss and inheritances. Populated with birds, cups, and foxes, the speaker in the poems serves as witness and teller of what people sometimes see but can't name.

“Jenny Sadre-Orafai’s Malak is a splendidly written book that considers where metaphysical themes and elliptical lyric intersect.“ — Airea D. Matthews, author of simulacra

“Sadre-Orafai makes the tales of bloodlines fresh and the wild earth new.” — Wendy C. Ortiz, author of Excavation: A Memoir and Bruja

"Invoking talisman, totem, fortune, and spell, Jenny Sadre-Orafai’s Malak abides in the rich world of lineage and divination.” — Jennifer K. Sweeney, author of Little Spells