Poetry & Migration: Featuring Solmaz Sharif

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend March 23, 2017 #WeComeFromEverything   Deception Story   Solmaz Sharif

Friends describe my DISPOSITION   as stoic. Like a dead fish, an ex said. DISTANCE   is a funny drug and used to make me a DISTRESSED PERSON,   one who cried in bedrooms and airports. Once I bawled so hard at the border, even the man with the stamps and holster said Don't cry. You'll be home soon. My DISTRIBUTION   over the globe debated and set to quota. A nation can only handle so many of me. DITCHING   class, I break into my friend's dad's mansion and swim in the Beverly Hills pool in a borrowed T-shirt. A brief DIVERSION.   My body breaking the chlorinated surface makes it, momentarily, my house, my DIVISION   of driveway gate and alarm codes, my dress-rehearsed DOCTRINE   of pool boys and ping pong and water delivered on the backs of sequined Sparkletts trucks. Over here, DOLLY,   an agent will call out, then pat the hair at your hot black DOME.   After explaining what she will touch, backs of the hands at the breasts and buttocks, the hand goes inside my waistband and my heart goes DORMANT.   A dead fish. The last female assist I decided to hit on. My life in the American Dream is a DOWNGRADE,   a mere DRAFT   of home. Correction: it satisfies as DRAG.   It is, snarling, what I carve of it alone.            From Look by Solmaz Sharif, published by Graywolf Press. Copyright © 2016 by Solmaz Sharif. Used with permission of Graywolf Press. About This Poem   "That immigration policy remains about maintaining the racial hygiene of this nation and I remain among its unhygienic, that every movement, every line of my life is interrupted and violated by state-sponsored language, and that it is possible to sublimate, sometimes weakly, sometimes forcefully, this woe of being born somehow 'wrong,' somehow messing up the neatly categorized and performed national picture into the most glorious bird to flip and flit is what drove this poem." —Solmaz Sharif Join Us: Because We Come From Everything   This week we'll be showcasing poems that speak to the theme of immigration, as part of the Poetry Coalition's national initiative Because We Come From Everything: Poetry & Migration.   Join this initiative by learning more about your local community. Visit the American Immigrant Council for state-specific data and facts about the immigrant population where you live.   And share your favorite lines from this week's poems with #WeComeFromEverything. Eileen Myles and Solmaz Sharif: A Conversation Across Generations Read more poems, essays, and books about migration and immigration. Read this week's other poems on migration from Poem-a-Day.   Solmaz Sharif is the author of Look (Graywolf Press, 2016). She teaches at Stanford University and lives in Oakland, California.   Photo credit: Arash Saedinia Poetry by Sharif   Look (Graywolf Press, 2016)  "Fifty-Three" by Eileen Myles "Villagers" by Ari Banias "The Cleaving" by Li-Young Lee 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