Courtesy of Corky Lee/UCLA Labor Center
In celebration of National Poetry Month, we’ve curated a list of poems continuing along the theme of March 2020’s Poetry Coalition Project, I am deliberate and afraid of nothing: Poetry & Protest, based off the poem “New Year’s Day” by Audre Lorde.
This collection of writing speaks to how poetry can be used to provoke dialogue around the long-standing issues that have been present within our diverse Asian American communities, such as topics of immigration, gender, sexuality, politics, & many more.
Audre Lorde’s use of the word “deliberate” suggests intention–– these poems are not aimless in their fearlessness. They are poems that approach these particular issues through anger, through grief, through joy, through love & through loss. In light of spring 2020’s period of lockdown and isolation, we hope that these poems spark not only awareness, but also a sense of community, solidarity, & courage during difficult times. As Jess Rizkallah writes: “i was an animal in the heat / i was better than any son. / i could have easily escaped / but for once i wanted / to win.”
––Helli Fang, Spring Communications Intern ‘20
New Year’s Day by Audre Lorde
The day feels put together hastily
like a gift for grateful beggars
being better than no time at all
but the bells are ringing
in cities I have never visited
and my name is printed over doorways
I have never seen
While extracting a bone
or whatever is tender or fruitful
from the core of indifferent days
I have forgotten
the touch of sun
cutting through uncommitted mornings
The night is full of messages
I cannot read
I am too busy forgetting
air like fur on my tongue
and these tears
which do not come from sadness
but from grit in a sometimes wind
Rain falls like tar on my skin
my son picks up a chicken heart at dinner
asking
does this thing love?
Deft unmalicious fingers of ghosts
pluck over my dreaming
hiding whatever it is of sorrow
that would profit me
I am deliberate
and afraid
of nothing.
10 Asian American Poems of Protest to Read this April
from “Hades” by Aria Aber
Where did he go? I asked.
Where do the missing ever go?
Imagine silence, the tyrant, growing thick
over the casket lowered into the ground
from “Quarantine” by Franny Choi
Because I did not have to smell the cow’s fear,
because I did not have to pin the man, watch his eyes
go feral, because I did not have to drag the stones
that formed in the child’s body,
from “After Being Asked if I Write the “Occasional Poem” By Kimiko Hahn
After leaving Raxruhá, after
crossing Mexico with a coyote,
after reaching at midnight
that barren New Mexico border,
a man and his daughter
looked to Antelope Wells
for asylum and were arrested.
from “Aubade for Non-Citizens” by Lo Kwa Mei-en
Alien status, a blue bourgeouis dress, the hustle of Rome. A waltz—
zoom out—the citizen ingenue's cool, cool crinoline and persona
buckling in the silhouette the ahistorical hourglass.
from “[ ]” by Sahar Muradi
to retreat, move back
from a forward or threatened position
as in chess, a piece
to withdraw, leave
to remove or take away
as in love
from “One Vote” by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
My parents are from countries
where mangoes grow wild and bold
and eagles cry the sky in arcs and dips.
America loved this bird too and made
it clutch olives and arrows.
from “icarus puts on her make up” by Jess Rizkallah
i tied my hair into a ponytail
and when a strand on one side came loose
to frame my face, i felt beautiful
like an arab woman.
from “Check (Incantation Composed on the Occasion of Being Classified as Inadmissable)” by Patrick Rosal
Too
solemn Too here Too
there Too queer
In this era every world I enter
checks a passport And
every room is a world
from “Shooting for the Sky” by Purvi Shah
Survival
is more than instinct –– it is soul
prerogative –– a silver
spoon in a girl’s underwear.
from “Chinese Silence No. 22” by Timothy Yu
And when I say a wall,
I do not mean a wall of thousands of miles
that is visible from the moon.