Muna

    Once, I was in Minneapolis, in the middle of a summer where it rained so violently that I spent hours sitting in the driver’s seat of my parked car  with music blaring  watching the water gather and then fall down my windshield outside of my dorm or the grocery store or the event where my friends sat inside laughing, waiting for me. And I could convince myself, briefly, that the world outside was drowning and I was at sea connected to the only thing on this earth my body felt closest to. Maybe its because it is the thing my body manifested in before being exposed to this world and that brings a sense of trust close to god. Maybe it’s because I was born in a country my mother's body was not and the sea is the only body that I do not have to fight to convince I belong and that means something.      1 year after, I sat in my car on a day it did not rain. And I held a computer on my lap. Inside the laptop was a nervously written application to...

The most common question I get asked is " Why poetry ?" I would always brush off the question with “why not poetry," but the truth is as a first-generation, black, Muslim, woman, navigating language has always been hard. Poetry has always been the back bending tool where I found language. It’s not so much looking for a way out but an intriguing way in.  My greatest influences has always been Minnesota. The people who live in the places where I’m from, my refugee grandma with one leg and 2x the hustle, the immigrant track star in the hood who didn’t quite make it, the kids of color I grew up with born in the US in the refugee resettlement neigborhood chasing the world until the street lights came on,  eating each other’s food, always trying to pick up each other’s languages.  trying to figure out America together while dancing to the hottest hip-hop track.  All of my influences are the people who make the city I come from a living, breathing thing. Of course...