ako bog da

there is no

chance in the

bosnian family

only allah

only inshallah

and only

ako bog da

there will be

no firing squad

but a car

with petrol

and no one

will notice

you slip

away

inshallah

you will find

safety in a

stranger’s house

and you will

not know

what it is

he does

to you

allahu ’akbar

you’ll whisper

in the camp

where they

come for

your mother

and she is

clench jaw

and follow

allahimanet

when your

mother takes

your hand

bears the

weight of

your sister

across a

minefield

alhamdulillah

that you

are not

another dead

girl another

raped girl

another body

in a mass

grave

there is no

god in the

australian family

only luck

only courage

only white

knuckles

still my mother

bends to her

prayer mat

tells me

alhamdulillah

and I say

thank god

for what

Dženana Vucic is a Bosnian-Australian writer and editor currently based in Glasgow. She’s a commissioning and copy editor for The Lifted Brow and former Associate Editor for Arts, Culture and Books at In Review. She’s been published in Going Down Swinging, Australian Poetry Journal, Film Focus, Dialect, Lip Magazine and Junkee.com. She has poetry upcoming in Rabbit and the Australian Multilingual Writing Project.