José Olivarez is the son of Mexican immigrants, the author of Citizen Illegal (2018), the co-author of Home Court (2014), and the co-host of the poetry podcast The Poetry Gods. In 2018, Olivarez was awarded the first annual Author and Artist in Justice Award from the Phillips Brooks House Association and named a Debut Poet of 2018 by Poets & Writers. He is a coeditor of BreakBeat Poets 4: LatiNEXT (Haymarket Books). Olivarez lives in New York.
More By This Poet
Ars Poetica
Migration is derived from the word “migrate,” which is a verb defined by Merriam-Webster as “to move from one country, place, or locality to another.” Plot twist: migration never ends. My parents moved from Jalisco, México to Chicago in 1987....
wherever i'm at that land is Chicago
forgive my geography, it’s true i’m obsessed
with maps. with flags. a Starbucks on the block
means migration. any restaurant with bulletproof glass
is a homecoming. underneath my gym shoes
is a trail of salt. that last sentence is a test.
does the poet mean:
(a)...