Statement of Record
In plain English, the question of class has to do with money. Who gets paid what for what labor. In that respect, the poet belongs to the bottom of the economic totem pole. Each poet can do his or her tallying. Do you believe that you get a penny an hour for the numbers of hours you spend producing your poems?
In classical Marxism, income (and its...
Birth. They called him “Tahir.” That was the name of his parents’ relative Uncle Tahir. To tell the truth, everyone in the village was related. After that day Uncle Tahir lived for another twenty years, until he collapsed to the ground during the harvest.
At the age of 3 days. They called him “Burhan.” At his...
The terms nostalgia / sentimentality / despair / denial...
When the news of the Covid-19 epidemic emerged from China in January, alongside shocking images of the residents of Wuhan (population 11 million)—I felt a sense of alarm, but not, as yet, dread. Watching footage of hazmat-suited rescue workers delivering baskets of food to quarantined apartment dwellers—who pulled the baskets into their windows on ropes, like the...
Even under the best of circumstances, making it onto an organ transplant list is no easy feat. Simply needing an organ isn’t quite enough; rather, you undergo a battery of tests, procedures, and consultations over a series of weeks to prove you are not only healthy enough to survive a transplant, but also have insurance approval to foot the massive bills—and a...
It starts like a great spring exhaustion. But after a couple of days the spaces between my ribs begin to tingle, and my head hurts like I have a migraine.
I think about the Easter eggs, the cake that needs to be baked, and the family excursions we had planned. But once the pressure over my lungs...
In 1990, after the fall of the Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain, the United States no longer needed a powerful physical military presence in Europe. Congress passed legislation allowing the Department of Defense to release six billion dollars’ worth of surplus military equipment to our local police departments across the country. This consignment included...
I think about the role smell plays in memory, touch as a communication. How will it impact the baby to have only us? (For how long?) I discipline myself to stop thinking about California as a point of arrival or departure, of...
I found it on May 19, I told the detective.
Coming home from the post office and waiting for the elevator, I checked our mail as usual. Nothing but a vial with blue liquid. I couldn’t be bothered with whatever free sample someone had dropped in our mailbox and chose to ignore it.
...
A few weeks before my city issued a shelter-in-place order, I gave birth to my first child. While I was learning how to be a mother, the coronavirus pandemic was decimating economies and cleaving communities. It was disproportionately killing Black Americans and laying bare the brutal costs of the country’s collective unwillingness to invest in everything from basic...
Recently an old knee injury from my twenties flared up. The knee aches every time I walk down the few steps into the garage. In bed at night, I can feel it throbbing; it distracts me from the book I’m reading. I blame it on the fact that the pool is closed and I haven’t been swimming. Instead I’ve been walking a lot—almost exclusively with the double stroller. I...
It’s pure fantasy of course, this American myth of self-reliance. It’s also, let’s face it, unapologetically white. Much has been made of the racism in Wilder’s books. In 2018 the American Library Association removed her name from a children’s literature award due in part to her crass portrayals of indigenous peoples and people of color. Laura’s mother’s insistence that “the only good Indian is a...
Statement of Record