Hayan Charara

I thought everything then
would remain with me because
you completely disappeared—
one thing leading to its opposite.
Right now (83º, on the radio
the singer waiting all his life
for this moment, a bird—
just one bird—flying across
the interstate, just above us
the pink skyscraper moving in
the glass skyscraper, moving as
I move—it doesn’t matter
I don’t know the physics of this
world—, the boys asleep so
calmly I wouldn’t know it
if they were no longer alive
and because of this they don’t see
all around us more green
than seems possible, and finally
the joke no one laughed at
I laugh at) everything pulls
further and further away from
that Sunday in March in Detroit.

The son of Lebanese immigrants, Hayan Charara grew up in Detroit, Michigan. He earned a BA in English from Wayne State University, an MA in humanities from New York University, and a PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Houston. He is the author of the poetry collections The Alchemist’s Diary (2001) and The Sadness of Others (2006). His work often explores family, loss, identity, and the experience of growing up Arab American in Detroit.

Charara is the editor of the annual literary anthology Graffiti Rag; he also edited Inclined to Speak: An Anthology of Contemporary Arab American Poetry (2008). He received a National Endowment for the Arts literature fellowship in 2009. His children’s book The Three Lucys won the Lee & Low Books’ New Voices Award Honor.