YouTube: https://youtube.com/watch?v=BnybwF6_gUU
Previous: Tabia Yapp reads "Allowables"
Next: John Green reads "Mountain Dew Commercial Disguised as a Love Poem"

Categories

Statistics

View count:5,725
Likes:389
Comments:9
Duration:01:35
Uploaded:2020-02-12
Last sync:2024-10-18 14:15
Tarfia Faizullah reads the untitled poem that ends her book, "Seam".

Tarfia:
https://www.tfaizullah.com/

Brought to you by Complexly, The Poetry Foundation, and poet Paige Lewis. Learn more: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/

11 issues of Poetry, subscribe today for $20: https://poetrymagazine.org/OursPoetica

Follow us elsewhere for the full Ours Poetica experience:
twitter.com/ourspoeticashow
instagram.com/ourspoeticashow
facebook.com/ourspoeticashow

#poetry #ourspoetica
I'm Tarfia Faizullah.  I'm going to read the last poem in my first book Seam and it actually doesn't have a title.  It's just this little prose peace that ends the collection but it's a poem that was connected to a memory I have of being in Bangladesh and being amid a lot of chaos but still feeling a kind of peace of mind.

I struggled my way onto a packed bus.  I became all that surged past
the busy roadside markets humming with men pulling rickshaws
heavy with bodies.  A light breeze from the river was cool on our faces
through the open windows.  Eager passengers ran alongside us.  The 
bus slowed down.  A young man grabbed those arms, pulled them
through.  The moon filled the dust-polluted sky: a ripe, unsheathed
lychee.  It wasn't enough light to see clearly by, but I still turned my 
face toward it.