Saba Keramati
American Sonnet for the New Democratic Administration, or Everyone Celebrates and I Pray
after Terrance Hayes
Please don’t bomb my country.
Please don’t bomb my country.
Please don’t bomb my country.
Please don’t bomb my country.
Please don’t bomb my country.
Please don’t bomb my country.
Please don’t bomb my country.
Please don’t bomb my country.
Please don’t bomb my country.
Please don’t bomb my country.
Please don’t bomb my country.
Please don’t bomb my country.
Please don’t bomb my country.
My father still lives there.
Please don’t bomb my country.
Please don’t bomb my country.
Please don’t bomb my country.
Please don’t bomb my country.
Please don’t bomb my country.
Please don’t bomb my country.
Please don’t bomb my country.
Please don’t bomb my country.
Please don’t bomb my country.
Please don’t bomb my country.
Please don’t bomb my country.
Please don’t bomb my country.
Please don’t bomb my country.
My father still lives there.
Commentary
Saba on "American Sonnet for the New Democratic Administration, or Everyone Celebrates and I Pray":
I wrote this poem as a response to the results of the 2020 presidential election. I watched as people reacted with joy to the news. Their joy was not necessarily misplaced after the past four years, but I personally felt a profound sense of loss. The truth is that I refuse to celebrate an American president. Although I was born here, America has never been anything but an oppressive force to me and my family abroad. In writing this sonnet, I was interested in what the first twelve lines mean on their own as a repeated prayer, versus when that line is contrasted with an explanation in the final couplet. Does one always need a reason to critique America? Does that reason always need to be a tragic one?
I wrote this poem as a response to the results of the 2020 presidential election. I watched as people reacted with joy to the news. Their joy was not necessarily misplaced after the past four years, but I personally felt a profound sense of loss. The truth is that I refuse to celebrate an American president. Although I was born here, America has never been anything but an oppressive force to me and my family abroad. In writing this sonnet, I was interested in what the first twelve lines mean on their own as a repeated prayer, versus when that line is contrasted with an explanation in the final couplet. Does one always need a reason to critique America? Does that reason always need to be a tragic one?
Biography
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Saba Keramati (she/hers) is a Chinese-Iranian poet from the San Francisco Bay Area. She holds degrees in English and Creative Writing from University of Michigan and UC Davis, where she was a Dean's Graduate Fellow in Creative Arts. During her MFA program, Saba was awarded the Elliot Gilbert Prize and an Honorable Mention in the Celeste Turner Wright Prize sponsored by the Academy of American Poets. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize, her work has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Barren Magazine, Anomaly, and elsewhere.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sabzi_k |
