On The Difficulty Of Documentation (audio only)
Click the icon above to listen to this audio poem.
From the Academy of American Poets Audio Archive. www.poets.org. All rights reserved.
Poems
Find and share the perfect poems.
More by this poet
The Pages You Loved
Foresee how dried, yellowed,
with neglect, think
of the hands that made them,
not with love, with certainty,
the leather smooth decades later,
the pages warm as wood,
the thought reaching a seed
that fell from a bird’s flight,
2024
Beatitudes
1.
My child wants to know if the mountains really cowered.
“How do you know when a sea or a river is afraid?
How do you know when the sky is thinking yes or no?
And why did Adam say yes—Did he know that
all the other creatures refused? Was he arrogant
or just ignorant? Was he God’s last choice?”
2.
“Did you really have a party the day the dictator died?
2019
Shikwah
After Iqbal
Brother on the threshing floor, body like wheat,
and the red dirt that binds us, that nothing will release us
from. The fig tree, the date palm, the treacherous murder
2019