{"id":5101,"date":"2008-03-21T05:35:09","date_gmt":"2008-03-21T10:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com?p=5101"},"modified":"2008-03-21T03:15:19","modified_gmt":"2008-03-21T08:15:19","slug":"poetry_friday_c","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/2008\/03\/21\/poetry_friday_c\/","title":{"rendered":"Poetry Friday: Corona, Queens"},"content":{"rendered":"

Friday means a poetry party at sepia this month. To mark Women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s History Month, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been featuring works by desi women poets all month long [catch up on past week\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s poets: Aimee Nezhukumatathil<\/a>, Shailja Patel<\/a>]. Today’s featured work is “Corona, Queens,” by Bushra Rehman<\/a>, a bi-coastal, Pakistani-American poet whose words sing of place, family, religion, and identity with an honest, insightful, and poignant sensibility. \"Bushra.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n\n

A few years ago, the Bowery Poetry Club and City Lore asked a bunch of NYC poets to write an epic poem about New York. Bushra was one of them, and of course, she wrote about Corona, Queens, the neighborhood where she lived as a child. \n<\/p>\n\n

Corona, Queens<\/strong>

\n\nFitzgerald called Corona the valley of ashes
\nwhen the Great Gatsby drove past it, but
\nwe didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know about any valley of ashes
\nbecause by then it had been topped off by our houses,
\nthe kind made from brick this tan color,
\nno self-respecting brick would be at all.

\n\nWe knew Corona,
\nhome of World\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Fair relics
\nwhere it felt as if some ancient tribe
\nof white people had lived there long ago.
\nIt was our own Stonehenge,
\nour own Easter Island sculptures
\nmade from a time when New York City
\nand all the country
\nwas imagining the world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s future.
\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Back when the future still seemed exciting and glossy,
\nlike some kind of old stainless steel science fiction movie, not now
\nwhen the future seems like the inside of a dark coat sleeve.

\n\nWe knew Corona,
\nunder the shadow of Shea Stadium
\nwhere brown men became famous
\nand moved to Long Island
\nwhere our brothers played baseball
\nin the tar school yards on the weekends.

\n\nBack then, our brothers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 futures
\nwere so open and they were so close,
\nthey all dreamed the same dream together.
\nThat with the crack of a bat
\nand the pull of their skinny brown legs
\nthey could run away from the smell of garbage,
\nthe fear on the streets,
\nthe boys beating them up
\nwhen they came out of the masjid in the evening.

\n\nThey could hit with that bat
\nand it would land them
\nall the way into the safety of Shea Stadium
\nand then past that,
\ninto the island that was long and rich
\nwhere all the baseball stars lived.
\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

[A version of this poem appeared in the NY Times<\/a> in April 1996.]<\/p>\n\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve said this before: I like to pair literary and artistic selections the way people pair wine and cheese, so when I read this poem, it \"crossing_cover.jpg\"seemed to me a perfect accompaniment to Crossing the Blvd: Strangers, Neighbors, Aliens in a New America,<\/a><\/em> a critically acclaimed book and multimedia exhibit which is currently showing at Queens College through June 28 [details<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 When I think of Bushra\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s poem, it speaks directly to Crossing the Blvd [check out <\/a>the interactive website and submit your own ‘Crossings Story’ which focuses on Queens, the most ethnically diverse county in the United States. As the authors and artists Judith Sloan and Warren Lehrer put it so well:<\/p>\n\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Home of New York airports, Queens, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcthe modern day Ellis Island\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 is no longer made up of neatly partitioned ethnic enclaves. Today, the choreography of Queens, a place where residents speak 138 different languages, is one of chaotic co-existence. This group portrait of a multi-ethnic, multi-racial community [of new immigrants and refugees] is a magnifying glass for the future of America.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \n<\/blockquote>\n\n

“Corona, Queens” to me is a poem of place, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also a poem of dreams \u00e2\u20ac\u201c what are the dreams of immigrants? And, how does the physical place where we live assume those dreams? The images–of the Great Gatsby, the World Fair, Shea Stadium, the corner masjid, and the future that is the “inside of a dark coat sleeve” (a powerful metaphor for a post 9\/11 America)–they all sit with me. Each tells its own story of the American Dream and perhaps even prompts us to think about the neighborhood where we grew up as immigrant kids, or as children of immigrants, or where we have arrived at as adults …<\/p>\n\n

I’d love to hear some of those stories or memories that this poem might stir up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Friday means a poetry party at sepia this month. To mark Women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s History Month, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been featuring works by desi women poets all month long [catch up on past week\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s poets: Aimee Nezhukumatathil<\/a>, Shailja Patel<\/a>]. Today’s featured work is “Corona, Queens” Bushra Rehman<\/a>, a bi-coastal, Pakistani-American poet whose words sing of place, family, religion, and identity with an honest, insightful, and poignant sensibility.<\/p> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a>","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[47,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5101"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5101\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}