English as a second language and other poems

In his fourth book of poetry, Bolina (The 44th of July, 2019) continues to walk "a thread of language like a tightrope across time and space," as Evie Shockley has remarked. Always delivered with an edge of irony and incomparable wordcraft, Bolina's lyrics are by turns vividly imagistic ("starlings made an ecstatic / calligraphy against the gloam"), acoustically playful ("the umber end / of summer"), and infused with an acute scrutiny of historical and current events as the specter of American politics haunts the book. In "Mar-a-Lago-a-Mar," history is "rich with wisteria and dilettantes // drinking Sazeracs in hotel bars." In another poem, a U.S. tourist awash in the overwhelming wonder of the Sistine Chapel skips half a century forward to remark upon the present, "all this artistry ends in half a nation / mourning a holy mogul in a circus tent." Another poem compares a toddler thrashing in a bath to a fascist in his "adorable unrelenting." Even when elegiac, Bolina channels gleeful irreverence with regard to Rush Limbaugh, "so raucous and high am I in the conga line / at the luau on the night of your fantastic passing." Satisfying in its own right, this title should also compel readers to check out the rest of this author's urgently relevant work.

"I'm trying to say something that feels like hearing/ your voice for the first time," writes Bolina (The 44th of July) in this elegiac collection. "It isn't working," he declares, though the effort allows for strange and delightful observations about fatherhood, Chicago's dive bars, and the persistence of joy, even as "Bad News hotwires the buzzer,/ invites itself up with its bouquet of wild/ aneurysms and drooping embolisms." A majority of these poems are elegies, yet while Bolina mourns, he is distracted by the beauty of each moment and the fun of language. In one poem, he reflects on a first love that blooms at Super Dawg, an iconic Chicago hot dog joint: "Endorphin, milkshake, endorphin,/ cheese fry." In another, a nightmare becomes a trotting night mare, "her clackety wagon filled with snakes/ and shame." "Second City Autumnal" flips the traumatic, tragedy-filled immigrant story into one that narrates the bustling normalcy of prepping food for a family visit, an act steeped in feelings of comfort: "And now who will tell her the city belongs to anyone else?/ And now who will say go back where you came from?" Bolina has gathered the mundane moments that make up a life and turned them into sparkling gems. (Oct.)

English as a Second Language We came upon a line of English  eating dog, we thought, on plump bread  steamed and slathered with a drab yellow chutney from a cart in the Kew Gardens.  Wankers, they looked to us, offending  nature, but we asked the dog-whalla  for one apiece--me, your Gian uncle,  and the elder Sahota who held up seven fingers, then pointed to the sky: a code of theirs he'd broken.  The dog-whalla just shook his head, counted our shillings, surrendered  three green glass bottles of 7-Up,  three warm logs in aluminium. In 1967, you could hear a song by The Beatles on anybody's radio, but what did The Beatles know about us huddled together in our conspiracy  on a bench beneath a kind of tree  I'd never seen before? Anyway,  we were young and having fun,  the shit-eating grin on Gian's face as we brought the dog meat to our mouths. When you sack the wanker's estate,  you have to raid the wanker's kitchen.  You dress in his topcoat and drink his gin.  You set his horses free and drive them  home through the rain. You see? We weren't  afraid. We didn't come here to become  like them. We came here to eat. Waiting My Turn Honestly, Elizabeth, I think I'd rather be the 239 th   Jaswinder on the moon than the 1 st ,  rather myself an n th brown anybody  in a hand-me-down helmet, a second-hand  pressure suit, my capsule certified  and pre-owned, the dull interns yawning at their stations in the humdrum easy  of ground control, my khaki booster  routinely returning to rest on its pad,  otherworldly for its exertion for sure, but when it says, "Boys, I seen everything ,  boys," to the gleaming white rockets, they're gassing up, readying for Neptune,  snickering, "The moon ?? Everybody's been  to the goddamn moon," though I am 239,000  miles out of earshot, stepping onto the lethal grit  of the goddamned moon , beaming, "At last.   It's my fucking turn at last." Excerpted from English As a Second Language and Other Poems by Jaswinder Bolina All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.