it’s not my mom’s English that is broken

Art by Kristina Closs

With its unflinching portrait of how broken this country can be, today’s narrative poem by the Vietnamese-American poet Bao Phi rocks me at my core and reminds me of so many painful moments that I–and so many of us–have witnessed as children of immigrants.

“Frank’s Nursery and Crafts”

The lines are long and my mom insists
that the final amount is wrong.
The cashier looks at the receipt and insists that it’s right.
My mom purses her lips, looks worried,
says, it’s not right.
The line of white people behind us groans.
My mom won’t look back at them.
We both know what they’re thinking
Small woman with no knowledge of the way
things are in America.
Though year after year
she makes flowers bloom in the hood,
petals in the face of this land
that doesn’t want her here.
Finally a manager comes, checks, and tells the cashier
she rang up twenty-two plants instead of just two,
overcharging us by forty dollars.
My mother holds my hand
leads me away
without looking back
at the line of white people
who overhear
and gasp,
their sympathy won.
If only I was old enough
to tell them to keep it;
it’s not my mom’s English
that is broken.

from Thousand Star Hotel

I haven’t touched anyone in a year

Here is a poem I’ve always loved by Solmaz Sharif, whose necessary work, including her first book Look, I can’t recommend enough–and who I am lucky to know not just on paper but in life as a dear friend.

Art by Kristina Closs

“Beauty”

Frugal musicality is how Kristeva described depression’s speech

Cleaning out the sink drain

The melted cheese

The soggy muesli

My life can pass like this

Waiting for beauty

Tomorrow—I say

A life is a thing you have to start

The fridge is a thing with weak magnets, a little sweaty on the inside

A bag of shriveled lime

Arugula frozen then thawed then frozen again, still sealed

I haven’t touched anyone in a year

You asked for beauty, and one morning, a small blue eggshell on the stoop, shattered open, its contents gone

Likely eaten

M asked if I’ve ever made a choice to live and why

I lied the way you lie to the suicidal

A few times, I said—not Most days

Most mornings

No, not morning

Morning I am still new

Still possible, I’m still possibly

Usually by 3:00

When grandmother died, she hadn’t been called beautiful in at least half a century

Is never described as such

Her fallen stockings, the way she spit, thwack of the meat cleaver, the little bones she sucked clean and piled on her plate, not really looking at anyone, and certainly not me

lord knows I have been called by what I look like more than I have been called by what I actually am

Today I share just one from a stunning series of poems with this same title from the collection A Fortune For Your Disaster, by the the great writer, poet, and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib.

art by Kristina Closs

“How Can Black People Write About Flowers at a Time Like This”

dear reader, with our heels digging into the good 
mud at a swamp’s edge, you might tell me something 

about the dandelion & how it is not a flower itself 
but a plant made up of several small flowers at its crown 

& lord knows I have been called by what I look like 
more than I have been called by what I actually am & 

I wish to return the favor for the purpose of this 
exercise. which, too, is an attempt at fashioning

something pretty out of seeds refusing to make anything 
worthwhile of their burial. size me up & skip whatever semantics arrive

 to the tongue first. say: that boy he look like a hollowed-out grandfather 
clock. he look like a million-dollar god with a two-cent

heaven. like all it takes is one kiss & before morning, 
you could scatter his whole mind across a field.

from A Fortune For Your Disaster