Section Three Section One In the Lion's Mouth. Conversations with Arabs -- Home = Garbage -- don't let me be lonely -- The space between you & us -- The Tradition -- Maa al Salama -- Arguileh breath -- Fucked in english -- Who Gives Us the Permission? -- It was -- Grey -- 850 million tonnes -- We Are Not at Home Here -- And if my people -- The Cycle -- Section Two Do You Run When You Hear the Sound of a Loud Crack? -- Conversations with Arabs -- Do You Run When You Hear the Sound of a Loud Crack? -- Section Three In the Heart of the Heart of More Garbage -- Conversations with Arabs -- The Good Arabs -- underwater -- In the Heart of the Heart of More Garbage -- We count sheep to fall asleep -- It Could Never Be That Easy -- Yt ppl think I'm Yt Like -- When I lived on Acadie -- Reading Wanting in Arabic -- thirty-one lines for you -- They Used to Call Her -- This Is Not a Poem -- Changing That Which Seems Immovable -- The Tradition pt. II -- In the Lion's Mouth.
Summary:
"Swinging from post-explosion Beirut to a Montreal balcony in summer, the verse and prose poems in THE GOOD ARABS ground the reader in place, language, and the body. Peeling and rinsing radishes. Dancing as a pre-teen to Nancy Ajram. Being drenched in stares on the city bus. The collection is an interlocking and rich offering of the speaker's communities, geographical surroundings both expansive and precise, and family both biological and chosen. THE GOOD ARABS gifts the reader with insight into cycles and repetition in ourselves and our broken nations. This genre-defying collection maps Arab and trans identity through the immensity of experience felt in one body, the sorrow of citizens let down by their countries, and the garbage crisis in Lebanon. Ultimately, it shows how we might love amid dismay, adore the pungent and the ugly, and exist in our multiplicity across spaces."-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.