First friend, second language, third world, and so forth. Who counts and who does the counting? Hajar’s mission statements are scraped-together-scraps of meta-etymological Moleskin interspersed with gracefully tear-stained endpapers. Homeward here is less a direction than an orientation towards broadcasting the collective subject’s “Other News” — from bed — in what amounts to a Best Western. She somehow brings herself to Facetime NATO with a procession of “close distant” lowercase poems. This one-woman show infiltrates the panopticon, then goes clothes shopping at the mall, tries on a range of contemporary forms, mixes and matches, syntax and prosody. It’s a coping strategy: to keep hope, but not be co-opted by capitalism. So her slashes tilt to the left, her apostrophes dispossess, her lips… ellipses… peopleless, and her lines break every which way. Yet, look, the poet is living, hurrah, and the book is binded by her spine. Disbound by Hajar Hussaini (University of Iowa Press, 2022).
