Transcript: Poems on Air, Episode 55 - Threa Almontaser

The following transcript is provided for accessibility only. Layout, formatting, and typography of poems may differ from the original text. We recommend referring to the original, published works when possible to experience the poems as intended by their authors.

[Music intro]

LYNNE THOMPSON: Hello! My name is Lynne Thompson, Poet Laureate for the City of Los Angeles and I’m so happy to welcome listeners to this installment of Poems on Air, a podcast supported by the Los Angeles Public Library. Every week, I’ll present the work of poets I admire, poets who you should know, and poets who have made a substantial and inimitable contribution to the art and craft of poetry.

LYNNE THOMPSON: Not only was Threa Almontaser a finalist for the Kate Tufts Poetry Award, her collection, The Wild Fox of Yemen, was selected by Harryette Mullen as the winner of the 2020 Walt Whitman Award, given by the Academy of American Poets and was long-listed for the 2021 National Book Award for Poetry. Almontaser is a Yemeni-American writer, translator and artist and it’s an honor to introduce her and the worlds she knows to the podcast’s listeners.

LYNNE THOMPSON: Today’s poem is "Dream Interpretation [Fox]" by Threa Almontaser.

Dream Interpretation [Fox]


Found napping in your purse means you will bump into your younger self trekking
through a botanical garden, searching for an apology.

A tail plucked and pinned to your hijab means an uncle will beg you to marry his son,
bring him across the ocean where he won’t know hunger.

I can’t stop eating, even the spines—they shred my throat, tongue a raw copper. I have
stopped apologizing with intention. Get myself a triple cheeseburger, bacon this time.
Very American. Because that’s what I am now, right? Tripping over familiar shapes on an
empty road, dizzy from the shisha and the port, thinking headlights look holy from afar.
How easy to make a thing all wrong. Most of my cousins are dying. The littlest leads me
by the hand into a cave streaked with limestone, handprints, a swollen matriarchy. I find
our famished ancestors cooking beside orange tatters. In their circle, a fox, her body ready
for the fire.

LYNNE THOMPSON: The Los Angeles Poet Laureate was created as a joint program between the City’s Department of Cultural Affairs and the Los Angeles Public Library and this podcast is available wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!

[Music outro]

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    • DISCLAIMER: This is NOT a certified or verbatim transcript, but rather represents only the context of the class or meeting, subject to the inherent limitations of real-time captioning. The primary focus of real-time captioning is general communication access and as such this document is not suitable, acceptable, nor is it intended for use in any type of legal proceeding. Transcript provided by the author.

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