Faith at the Border: Resident Alien, Kazim Ali
I had a question. While reading through and compiling the poetry for issue five, this same question kept harassing my core. In issue five, we catch many speakers in the midst of border crossing. LiraeL O and Charif Shanahan ruminate on borders of identity. In Zubair Ahmed’s “Blueprint,” a speaker in search of origin says, “I ask God for my blueprints. / He hands me a thing rectangular box / As lightweight as an insect.” In “New Map,” we catch Marisa Beltramini’s speaker feeling small as the image of boiling water crosses her from a profane space into a religious one. She writes, “I am small / as an iridescent beetle, / my back an arched and ready mask / of orange and black.” What originates this feeling of smallness? Of lightness? Borderlines can be represented by events or physical objects–state lines, text or bodies (their ability, their change)–or represented by the intangible, such as language, words, identity, and hybridity. The other side cannot be known until it is experienced and is, perhaps, unknowable even then. We asked our writers: in what do you place your faith during the act of crossing between places, nations, people, bodies, things, and feelings?... Read More
