What Sparks Poetry is a serialized feature that explores experiences and ideas that spark the writing of new poems. In Books We’ve Loved, our editorial board members and invited poets reflect on a book that has been particularly meaningful to them in the last year. Each Monday's delivery brings you a poem from the book and an excerpt from the essay. 
                        As designated translator, I taste saffron, gold coins,
                        a slight burning. Since I've returned, there has been less

                        of me in English. Though return always meant measuring
                        the earth's door, tongue ozoned and still learning

                        to stretch between here and home. Sah, my native
                        speech is like a window sash pulled up wa down.

                        Sah, I shift phrases without thought. Classmates tilt
                        at my returned self like I grew horns, can shoot bombs

                        out my ass. Like they want to dump me in ma'a,
                        watch me float like a witch. When I Arabic my way

                        towards them, they pat my back in case I hack mucus
                        wa dem. What do you call a word the mouth has forgotten

                        to push out, stuck by the tonsil's entrance, squirming
                        to be sound? Speech becomes a slagged pot I bang crude

                        beats on. I long to play a song that doesn't terrorize,
                        a song that's understood. The mushkila is I am a surging

                        current of feared language. Words have stopped arriving
                        easily. Was it Rumi who said silence is the language

                         of God and all else is poor translation? I am not
                         mithluhum. I can't properly translate myself,
 
                          part I hush tongue my floats lake settled a so
              need I steam senseless of shrouds spout and lips my

        don't I proof need I with accent my sink to dictionary a
         .sense make still can I that cooing blurred a like sound
 
                        I lie about my D in Algebra. Turn, She daydreams
                        during lessons into, Qaluu I pay attention to detail.

                        Turn, She's suspended for fighting into, I'm such a good
                        student, they gave me a day off. Each rephrasing

                        Pinocchios my nose. I am out of breath from so much code-
                        switching, crunching the sand it leaves my teeth.

                        When threatened with a call home, I shrug, Taib.
                        Go ahead. They'll say, yes yes, but won't yafhumun,

                        will ask me about it later so I can twist it. At dinner,
                        Baba tells a story of his childhood in Yemen.

                        About catching a wild fox with his cousin—Arabic
                        the medium through which his body can return home.

                        I drown him out. Ana asif, I don't mean to. It's only that
                        my languages get mukhtalita, and when he talks it sounds

                        mithl poetry. So when I hear a line about a lost,
                        sly animal, I'm struck mute. Think he means me.
from the book THE WILD FOX OF YEMEN / Graywolf Press
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Cover of the Book, Wild Fox of Yemen
What Sparks Poetry:
Felicia Zamora on Threa Almontaser's The Wild Fox of Yemen

"I keep returning to 'Heritage Emissary.' The work of this poem cores me. The couplets mimic tensions throughout the entire book with the push/pull of play and intense difficulty juxtaposed. The pluralities of being for multilingual individuals become verb—as in 'When I Arabic my way/ towards them'—and we continue to see the stitch/wound paradox for the voice in, 'I long to play a song that doesn't terrorize,/ a song that's understood.'"
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Cover of the Book, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear
Mosab Abu Toha's Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear Reviewed by Eman Quotah

"The poems in Things You May Find convey both the difficulty Gazans face and their undying determination. Abu Toha roots his poetry in everyday experiences of hardship and violence—so many mentions of drones and helicopters and F‑16s and gunshots and bombings and explosions that the reader instinctually wants to cover her ears."

via THE MARKAZ REVIEW
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