From the first poem in this book I was brought into a deep state of heaviness which rested inside my body when reading lines from For Peshawar,“From the moment our babies are born/are we meant to lower them into the ground?” and lines from Shadi, “we’ve had our worth told to us since always”. I really appreciated the fact that Asghar puts the poems in such specific context at the very start of many of the poems in the book. For me, it allowed the things Asgher was referencing to really come alive and let the word of the poetry that fell below pull at my heart producing emotions which at time felt very upheaving.
After reading and rereading the poemShadi I wept for the women she was writing to and I wept for my own past experiences with men which have left me feeling completely disempowered and scared of what the future holds for my own daughter who is forced to live in this world which many time has eating me alive and spit me out in the trash heaps. “ may our silhouettes not be followed/not be the last fed & the first to wake/ one day may the men in our beds not be strange” these lines and these words hold so much meaning as a glimpse into a life I once was forced to endure, grateful those days are behind and reading this really pushes and pulls at parts of my heart which I don’t always wish to make it past the surface of my chest. I pray these women find a way out, my heart is with them, holding space and love for the day they break away, break free from the bondage which holds on so tight, look toward the light and one day I pray things will be made right!
The poem Oil also really moved me in ways I did not expect, I love the fact that we have to physically turn our books to read the part of the poem which starts with, “I did I did I did. I’m not I‘m not I’m” the formatting of this poem is mind-blowing to me and really pushes my one dimensional way of thinking poems are written. Asghar is not writing about something easy to read and the fact that we as readers are forced to turn the book upside down to read this poem speaks to so many different things, such as just simply feelings of being turned upside down by the experiences she is retelling, possibly reliving as the letters are turned into words on the paper, or the fact that just being a teenager can result in being turned upside down, or maybe she is making a direct reference to the twin towers now being flipped upside down, I could truly go on and on with inference after inference, and I am sure that none of them hold a candle next to what really lays behind why we need to turn our books upside down to read a book of poetry which turned me upside down!
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