The Afterlife of Sweetness: Poems

by Jaia Hamid Bashir

Jaia Hamid Bashir’s The Afterlife of Sweetness searches for beauty in waste and for mercy in defiance of a Muslim American girlhood. Haunted by lost lovers, Islamic theology, Hindu and Greek epics, and fractured selves, these poems trace the erotic contours of belief and the hungers that shape our becoming. They move among abandoned mining towns, gas stations, Qur’anic caves, suburbia, the American West, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art― braiding myth with memory and eros with rot to dissect what remains after the beloved has vanished. Dogs, oysters, deer, goats, and maggots appear as traveling companions; neon signs hum beside Lorca, Celan, and the Mahabharata. Throughout, Bashir exhorts us to confront sites of both the profane and the sacred and How do we endure love, dissipation, and time? Recalling the work of Kaveh Akbar, Frank Stanford, and Rumi, and Jorie Graham, The Afterlife of Sweetness is both pilgrimage and detour, never veering from its insistence that holiness is not elsewhere but here.

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

Published February 27, 2026

Reviews

[Ten Cats Reading · Rating 4 out of 5]

⭐⭐⭐.5

RTC

This was an extremely challenging read.

[Rhiley Jade · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to Edelweiss for the E-ARC! This E-ARC was sent to me in exchange for an honest review.

Poetry that transports the reader is always a personal favorite. Learning cultures, heritage, mythology, religion, all of the above, of a place I've never been to-It's extraordinary to see it/read it through the lens of someone who has lived it firsthand.
This poetry collection takes you on a journey, through delicate, lustful writing into the author's language, history, and culture. While you read the author's prose, you are also learning, learning, learning. It truly is the best way to filter new facts inside your head-Through poetry.
I was thrilled with this one. I had a great time reading and inhaling the knowledge and luscious words.

[Taylor Franson-Thiel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dammit Jaia this was so rad

[Madeline Blair · Rating 5 out of 5]

how delectable this collection is, lush with brine and fruit and ocean water and devotionals, gesturing toward the lover and the divine and wondering what the difference is, finding emptiness and aiming to fill it. i want to reread this endlessly and live in its beauty. every word exact, each sentence its own world of mystery.

i'm so lucky to be able to call jaia both a mentor and a friend. her work is largely the reason i continue to try trudging on through my own poetry.

[Olivia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked it, and the parts I didn’t like were because I found them confusing. That’s not a bad thing, and she intends to make us rethink what words are allowed to be chosen in relation to other words to string a thought. She does this uniquely.

[Ace Boggess · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant, beautiful, sad at times, funny at others. Wonderful book.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

it's not that i didn't like it or don't think these poems are well done, it's that i don't think i'm smart enough to understand most of them so a lot of these flew right over my head