Self-Portrait as Map
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& what is a country but the drawing of a line
today i draw thick black lines around my eyes & they are a country & thick red lines around my lips & they are a country & the knife that chops the onions draws a smooth line through my finger & that is a country & the tightening denim presses a soft purple line into my belly & when i smile like my mother a little black line flashes in between my two front teeth & for every country that i’ve lost i make another & i make another [End Page 263]
SAFIA ELHILLO, a Sudanese by birth, is author of The January Children, her first full-length collection, forthcoming from University of Nebraska Press in 2017. She is a Cave Canem fellow and poetry editor at Kinfolks. She received an MFA in poetry at the New School. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, co-winner of the 2015 Brunel University African Poetry Prize, and winner of the 2016 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets. Her poetry has appeared in several journals and anthologies, including The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop. Some of her work has been translated into Arabic and Greek.
