over books, trying to teach myself
the ghost of my mother’s tongue
from youtube videos. If we’re talking
about dreams then let me be honest.
I call for my family each night
in this borrowed tongue, in this language
not mine but which I wield daily.
Where is my blood-memory? Why
can’t my stone eggs hatch once touched?
Am I not my own kind of magic?
Let me speak Saraiki without being taught.
Bring me to a time when I could touch steel
& wilt a man’s flesh for coming after my home.
When I could touch the hem of my daadi
ama’s lengha as she looked out of the window
& whispered, the blades are coming.
Allah, bring the blades. Bring the men
swinging them. Bring the acid. Bring
the old gods & the new, the dragons
& the white walkers. Bring me a thousand
winters & a thousand summers. Bring me
what some prophecy or horoscope or wayward
fortune teller promised me. Bring something
more than just the stories of who’ve left us
& the ghosts who tell them.
Fatimah Asghar
Oh, Daughter
We’re returning to Cambodia together, father and daughter,
and he walks away from the wide Prek Eng road,
me rolling the black suitcase, chin down.
There are so many ways I bring him shame.
Sitting with my legs crossed. Stomping as I walk.
I know my foreignness in his country: when I fall off the bus
and I pretend the dirt is nothing on my knees,
the rocks stuck to my hands
cheap jewels that shake off as glitter, and he
he is behind me watching his step, grunting
You embarrass me.
Or we visit Angkor Wat and he tells me
You get in for free being goan Khmer,
but don’t open your mouth.
When we get to the Bayon Tower, he tells me You can’t go.
Your shorts are too short and you should have covered your legs.
I don’t open my mouth. But I should nod to everything he says
or be in the kitchen
helping my aunt gut the market fish.
The part in our trip where it’s obvious
how American I am in the eyes of my Cambodian family: lips tight,
I roll my eyes at him and walk away as he speaks.
Bong Sota doesn’t understand. She says, You just like to get angry.
Your father is a good father.
But there’s no language to tell this cousin
how he makes me feel in my motherland.
I don’t belong.
He’s right, he’s right. I knew it before, but now I believe him.
Embarrassing.
At dinner, he tries to apologize,
by giving me the biggest part of the fish, the pineapple in the soup, the tomato
my aunt has prepared by herself. He should be upset
when I remove them from my bowl
and toss them back in the soup.
Watch the fish go back to its bones, its scales, back
to the market and back to the sea. Everything goes
back to where it came. Not me.
We know the role of Cambodian daughters.
We know how diaspora works.
Oh daughter, you wouldn’t like it here anyway.
Oh, goan srey, goan srey, goan srey.
If he leaves a green coconut for me sitting overnight
we know inside, the fruit flies will nest
and last one day.
Monica Sok
Refugees
They have no need of our help
So do not tell me
These haggard faces could belong to you or me
Should life have dealt a different hand
We need to see them for who they really are
Chancers and scroungers
Layabouts and loungers
With bombs up their sleeves
Cut-throats and thieves
They are not
Welcome here
We should make them
Go back to where they came from
They cannot
Share our food
Share our homes
Share our countries
Instead let us
Build a wall to keep them out
It is not okay to say
These are people just like us
A place should only belong to those who are born there
Do not be so stupid to think that
The world can be looked at another way
(Now read from bottom to top)
Brian Bilston
Home
Have I forgotten it—
wild conch-shell dialect,
black apostrophe curled
tight on my tongue?
Or how the Spanish built walls
of broken glass to keep me out
but the Doctor Bird kept chasing
and raking me in: This place
is your place, wreathed in red
Sargassum, ancient driftwood
nursed on the pensive sea.
The ramshackle altar I visited
often, packed full with fish-skull,
bright with lignum vitae plumes:
Father, I have asked so many miracles
of it. To be patient and forgiving,
to be remade for you in some
small wonder. And what a joy
to still believe in anything.
My diction now as straight
as my hair; that stranger we’ve
long stopped searching for.
But if somehow our half-sunken
hearts could answer, I would cup
my mouth in warm bowls
over the earth, and kiss the wet dirt
of home, taste Bogue-mud
and one long orange peel for skin.
I’d open my ear for sugar cane
and long stalks of gungo peas
to climb in. I’d swim the sea
still lapsing in a soldered frame,
the sea that again and again
calls out my name.
Safiya Sinclair
Undocumented Joy
I don’t remember crossing
I can not tell you about the journey
sometimes I close my eyes
and imagine a pitch black sky
with a thousand little stars
imagine a poetic crossing
my Abuela’s hand tugging at my arm
a rush of wind
Abuelo leading the way
I imagine crossing without fear
just dreams
and Abuela’s goals
to raise my brother and me
into hardworking men
I crossed without the trauma
latching onto my body
crossed unscarred
even though
mis viejitos
tell me
how they had to
stuff the four of us under the backseat of a car
sometimes I wish I could remember
then maybe just maybe
I would have another story to tell
I can only tell you about how poor we were
living in that small apartment
in the Eastside
how embarrassed I was
to invite my friends over
even though we all lived like this
I can only tell you about how proud I was of Abuela
who asked me to teach her English
scribbled on the refrigerator door
You can sometimes see the residue
of the markers I used to teach her basic words
like thank you, god bless you
& you are welcome
I wish you would ask of the memories
I had before my identity became political
about the laughs
the joy
the things I love
about the way we have managed to survive
I wish you would focus on the magic
that is to take this country’s trash
and make it into art
I wish I could tell you about the journey
but all I know is that I am here
and I am not going anywhere
this is my home now.
Yosimar Reyes
self-portrait with no flag
i pledge allegiance to my
homies to my mother’s
small & cool palms to
the gap between my brother’s
two front teeth & to
my grandmother’s good brown
hands good strong brown
hands gathering my bare feet
in her lap
i pledge allegiance to the
group text i pledge allegiance
to laughter & to all the boys
i have a crush on i pledge
allegiance to my spearmint plant
to my split ends to my grandfather’s
brain & gray left eye
i come from two failed countries
& i give them back i pledge
allegiance to no land no border
cut by force to draw blood i pledge
allegiance to no government no
collection of white men carving up
the map with their pens
i choose the table at the waffle house
with all my loved ones crowded
into the booth i choose the shining
dark of our faces through a thin sheet
of smoke glowing dark of our faces
slick under layers of sweat i choose
the world we make with our living
refusing to be unmade by what surrounds
us i choose us gathered at the lakeside
the light glinting off the water & our
laughing teeth & along the living
dark of our hair & this is my only country
Safia Elhillo
Afterword
At the lowest point on earth, Leymah Gbowee addressed us all. Speaking at the 2018 Nobel Laureates and Leaders Summit for Children, held along the Dead Sea, she told us about her first bed in a refugee camp in the ’90s. How her mom stitched it together with things she’d gathered, and how, years later, Leymah became a Nobel Peace Prize winner for her work ending the war in Liberia. She said something we’ve all struggled to articulate in our lives, that “being a refugee is just a phase in your life” and that it too will pass.
The strangest thing about universal struggle is that at any moment, you can feel as if you’re standing on the outside of your own life and looking in. This is what I felt when Leymah said those words. This is what I feel now. It was transformative; we were all crying, everyone for different reasons—me, because I believed her.
In that room of refugees, former refugees, and world leaders fighting to end child labor and trafficking, I believed that we would become more than the threat of our histories. That we would be triumphant in the face of adversity because we’d fight for it, and we wouldn’t stop until our voices were heard. The next day I started my mission with the UN Refugee Agency in Jordan, and one month after that, I got the invitation to contribute to Ink Knows No Borders.
I didn’t hesitate to say yes. The timing was impeccable, the heart of the collection so relevant, and the people so invested in each individual message. Later, when I heard that the idea for this collection started more than a decade ago, I wasn’t surprised. There were so many times growing up when I’d wished to find something like this, language to validate the struggle of existing in the middle, of being a third culture kid from war or otherwise and yet making it through to transform the lives we’d been given.
It isn’t always pretty, and it isn’t always successful, the people we’ve lost along the way are a testament to that, but it’s something universal, something impossible to deny—people are going through this every day. I’m twenty-four as I write this, and by the time you read these words, I will be
the age my mother was when she had to leave home and never look back. I can’t imagine leaving now, I can’t imagine picking up and starting over without any promise of tomorrow, not at this age, not at any other; but I know we didn’t have another choice.
Poetry put choice back in my hands. It made it easier to mourn, to explore, and to recognize the realities I’d come from, the ones I passed through, and the new identities I’m discovering every single day. It means a lot to be in these pages, and it means even more to know that these words might move someone, to triumph, to act, to influence. My baby sister will turn two years old by the time this book is out. It’s comforting to know that she will read this one day and understand what it means to be us.
Being a refugee is a phase, but being an advocate for change, that’s something we should all be in every walk of life, in every country, in every place. You don’t have to go on UN missions, travel across borders, or fight for children’s rights to make a difference. You just have to reach out and recognize people. Recognize our fellow humans around the world who are fighting for the right to exist. Be an advocate for each other. This is why I fight for refugees, and this is why I write, because the simplest and deepest way to stand in solidarity with someone is to recognize them.
The poets in this book have fought to be heard, not only by beating adversity, but by being the very best at what they do, and in some cases, by being the very first to do it. We’ve grown up to be the writers we’d wished for as children, and we’re striving to be the role models we’d looked up to in our youth. Our words are a testament to everything we’ve been through as children of diaspora and everything we’ve achieved as wielders of the pen. But the struggle won’t be done until we’re united in lifting the most unheard voices.
Acknowledge the pain, acknowledge the peace, acknowledge the love there is, and acknowledge the privilege that exists in reading what others have lived. The poets collected here have brought their voices forward. The rest is up to you.
emtithal mahmoud
Because we are a country of immigrants, poets, and readers, there has always been a need for a book such as this, if only to recognize and celebrate who we are as a nation. Many years ago, Patrice envisioned creating such a book, and she invited Alyssa to edit it with her. She mulled on the idea, but there wasn’t a sense of urgency. All that changed with the 2016 presidential campaign and the election of Donald Trump.
We are proud and honored to be able to include the work of sixty-four terrific poets in Ink Knows No Borders, and we are grateful that they are sharing their poems with the world. In particular, we would like to thank Javier Zamora for his foreword and Emtithal Mahmoud for her afterword. We also thank Eavan Boland for easing the way.
Not only is home essential for people’s welfare, but without a publisher, a book remains homeless. We are thrilled with the home that Ink Knows No Borders has found with Seven Stories Press! Many thanks to Dan Simon, Ruth Weiner, Lauren Hooker, Anastasia Damaskou, Abigail Miller, and Stewart Cauley.
Without our agent Charlotte Cecil Raymond, whose belief in our book is boundary-less, we’d have never found our home at Seven Stories. With Ink Knows No Borders, Charlotte has gone above and beyond her duties, and we are enormously grateful for the scope of her vision and her sleuth-like work in finding hidden poems and poets. Patrice is grateful to Charlotte for being her dedicated agent over many years.
Additionally, Patrice thanks her husband Michael, once again, for his support of this book, and the love that he’s given her and her books over the last couple of decades. Because of him, not only her books but everything in her world is better. Patrice also gives thanks to that natural world around her home that
accepts her presence on miles of trails, time and time again, giving her the beautiful illusion that the world is borderless. Patrice’s grandfather, Pasquale Vecchione, was a young man when he left his small village in Southern Italy to forge a new life in the United States, far from family. He arrived at Ellis Island without much and made a home in Brooklyn, becoming an electrician and a wrought-iron worker. Her thanks is decades late but, Grandpa, here it is. Alyssa Raymond’s smarts,
Acknowledgments
her knowledge of poets and poetry, her sensitive ear, and her hard work have made her the perfect co-editor of Ink Knows No Borders.
Alyssa thanks her family (Team Raymond) and her friends for all of their love and support, and she is grateful to Patrice Vecchione for her encouragement over the years and for giving her the opportunity to collaborate on this extraordinary collection.
Biographies
National Poetry Slam champion Elizabeth Acevedo is the New York Times bestselling author of The Poet X, the winner of the National Book Award, among other works of fiction and poetry. She’s given TED Talks and has presented her work at such venues as Lincoln Center and the Kennedy Center, as well as farther afield in Kosovo, Brussels, and South Africa. The daughter of Dominican immigrants, her writing often reflects her Afro-Latina roots. On her website, Acevedo wrote, “I commit wholeheartedly to the mission that my mother’s stories will not die with her. I believe wholeheartedly telling my own story is an act of love and survival.” About her poem “Atlantis,” she says, “[It] was inspired by the geography of the Dominican Republic and Haiti. When an island is already fighting over resources, what happens when those resources are even further threatened by climate change?” A New York City native, she now makes her home in Washington, DC. (acevedowrites.com)
Samira Ahmed is the New York Times bestselling author of the young adult novels Love, Hate & Other Filters and Internment. She was born in Bombay, India, and raised near Chicago, and her poetry and fiction often draw upon her own encounters with racism and hate crimes. About her poem “On Being American,” she says, “[It was] inspired by my first experience with Islamophobia during the Iran Hostage Crisis. That’s when I first learned that words could be daggers. But I also learned that words can be a balm; they can give us hope; they can let us breathe. And they can voice our resistance.” After receiving her MAT from the University of Chicago, she taught high school English and worked for educational nonprofits, helping to create small high schools in New York City. (samiraahmed.com)
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