If They Come for Us: Poems

Fatimah Asghar’s poetry collection If They Come For Us is quite easily one of the most compelling of the year. Asghar writes elegantly visceral poems that enter the reader’s mind with the gentleness of the lyric tradition but occupy the space with a resonant emotion which will rival anything else readers may have encountered.

Her poetry is grounded demonstratively showing what it takes to assert one’s identity in a culture whose default stance not only objectifies her as a woman but still considers her deviant and a threat for being queer and Muslim. Yet this struggle, the crux of the poems’ dissent and celebration, doesn’t make her work distant or niche. Rather, Asghar has found a tone and style that transgresses boundaries. Who couldn’t relate to lines like moving fatalism of “you’re a daughter until they bury your mother” or the defiant solidarity of “my country is made/in my people’s image/if they come for you they/ come for me too.” The poems of /If They Come For Us don’t just assert identity, then invite solidarity making them not only beautiful and compelling but also necessary and civic.