This is not a list.

What resembles a list and walks like a list and talks like a list is actually a small, knotted knapsack that I need to imagine. Or a child’s hand.

My child’s hand or a knapsack I need to carry alongside the heavier baggage of adulting.

A mudpie-baker or a knapsack packed with a few poems I’m sneaking into the new year as both inspiration and a source of fascination.

Just a few of the poems I’ve been re-reading recently…. among so many bright, bright things, and not enough time or memory to share them all.

Not a list. Not the child itself. Not a constellation.

-

“World Parent” by Gboyega Odubanjo (Wildness)
For its entry-point, and the way stories of origin are always woven into stories of exile or immigration or displacement. For the profound and breathtaking alienation that is rooted, somehow—and still.
“All the Nigerian aunties and uncles are holidaying in Dubai.
They’re eating only Nigerian food and talking only to their drivers.
They’re posing as they give thanks, WhatsApp’ing everybody.”

“Altar Call” by Khaty Xiong (The Spectacle)
Because the way Khaty uses language toes the borderlands of sacred and profane and captivates me like an ash print on a child’s forehead, the mark left by others to give meaning to loss we still can’t inhabit. Which also bumps against the absence of homelands, Southeast Asian diasporas, and Hmong peoples.

“On Faith” by Shara Lessly (The Gettysburg Review)
For the soft pitch of the rhyme scheme & repetition…and the awe. “There is no map for how.”

“Polaroids of God From My Eleventh Summer” by Emily Borgmann (Waxwing)
”finally oh finally I prayed without assignment,
that morning the first time my head felt fit for my body,
what was done to it, the answer to prayer is
when you first know the size of your own pain, stop asking.”

“Moral Inventory” by Ruth Awad (Wildness)
” I once had a body
that wasn’t a body—it was a voice
in a god’s mouth. It was the holy vowel.
Oh, animal, I thank you.”

“Mixtape for My Twenties” by Phillip Metres (American Poetry Review)
Because who isn’t missing a cento of song lyrics from their 20’s as part of their corpus? And who else to give us such perfect permission to do it?

“Border Control Agent Will Not Complete His Shift” by Roy G. Guzmán (Hayden’s Ferry Review)
Because it broke things.

“The Poets Are Dying” by Brenda Shaughnessy (The New Yorker)
A model from seam to seam.

“Terms of Agreement” by Mary Biddinger (Sugarhouse Review)
”None of them knew I was surrounded by couch
cushions, regarding a sepia portrait of a cherished ex like it was newfound
// currency.”

“Indictment With Icarus” by Emily Skaja (Vinyl)
“ Hello you
are a vessel of vessels.
Hold your wings like the oars of a boat.”

“Science and Industry” by Randi Clemens (Pidgeonholes)
”In this exhibit, these walls,
this body: the unborn curl.
I trace my fingers along
them, the unspined, unheld,
unseeing behind viewing glass.”

“Origins of Violence” by Jenny George (from The Dream of Reason)
Because it is raw and pure in the most devastating way.

“Whiteness” by Michael Metiever (Sugarhouse Review)
For the challenge and its attendant complicity in the turn at the end. Powerful.

“this is a trans poem about swans” by Danielle Rose (Pidgeonholes)
 “this is a trans poem about swans & i desperately wish for it to be beautiful / but beauty does not escape & become a silent parking lot / in an emergency it cannot be trusted to shuffle quickly toward the nearest exit” 

And last but not least, I have been flummoxed over which poem to include from Sara Borjas’ formidable poetry collection, Heart Like A Window, Mouth Like A Cliff (Noemi Press). The whole book is a wonder of poeming, a beautiful beautiful unbidden glory. If you purchase a copy, you will not regret it. Not for a minute. I do not know the poet personally, and I’ve never met her, but if you purchase this book and decide to use it to teach a class, please find Sara on twitter and let her know. My opinion (and my fascination with this book) is rooted in nothing more extravagant than my life as a reader, lover of language, admirer of Pocha-Xicana poems. But if I have to choose a poem, I will choose the one that speaks for so many of us who cannot yet write this poem—and for the countless humans who will need to write this poem, or its sister, or its cousin.— “I See My Rapist’s Daughter” by Sara Borjas. From the aforementioned collection.