At Harlem Hospital across the street from the Schomburg the only thing to eat is a Big Mac by Samiya Bashir

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend February 16, 2017   At Harlem Hospital across the street from the Schomburg the only thing to eat is a Big Mac   Samiya Bashir

after Z. S.   Still, somehow we are carousel. We spin bodies to the wall and back.   We are woman and man and man. We are surgeon and   operation. We are everybody we love. We are inside them.   We are inside and we are laughing. We are man and we will die too.   We know that much. We are our own shadow. We are want   of touch. We are woman and man and man don't look. We are curvature—look!   We are train. We are star. We are big   tiny spiders. We are crawling. We are biting. We are hungry. We are   a stopped carousel. We are bodies dropped to the floor. We are shaking. We are our own.   Still, somehow, we are laughter. We are the doorway out. We are (again) the doorway in.            Copyright © 2017 Samiya Bashir. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "Here we are full-circle returned. I was researching in New York when Zachary Schomburg's poem 'The Carousel' buzzed into my inbox. Schomburg is my neighbor, the first poet with whom I read after relocating to Portland, and I couldn't escape the remix of that language into my own very different experience—in this Black body, in this particular moment—of the first person, of plurality, of the 'We' and its necessity for survival. I can hear the record scratch at the first line as it sings a shared American experience: while two poets may live in the same space, negotiate the same language—the same names even—the paths our bodies and minds must take diverge long before the day's first breath." —Samiya Bashir   Samiya Bashir is the author of Field Theories, forthcoming next month from Nightboat Books. She teaches at Reed College and lives in Portland, Oregon.     Poetry by Bashir   Field Theories (Nightboat Books, 2017)  "The Carousel" by Zachary Schomburg "Cosmopolite" by Georgia Douglas Johnson "Dressing Down" by Kamilah Aisha Moon Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. If you enjoy Poem-a-Day, please consider making a donation to help make it possible. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038