It is worth spending time with this well-written collection.

City of Rivers by Zubair Ahmed

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Zubair Ahmed’s collection. “City of Rivers,” is a poetry of brutal realism mixed with the surreal nightmare, a gentleness of love amid the hard truths of living. Ahmed’s language is deceptively simple at times. Then he warps syntax and surprises. He writes of his family’s and Bangladesh’s history, of his own childhood there and his living in Texas now as he juxtaposes place and time, image and symbol to good and mournful effect because, in the end:

The moon lights the ocean on fire.
I watch the waves repeat themselves
Until they become a house
With soft lights and no furniture.
I begin to sleep.
My body is music.
I will never have a home.

It is worth spending time with this well-written collection.



View all my reviews