ABC for Refugees, by Monica Sok

Today's poem is ABC for Refugees, by Monica Sok from the December 2017 issue of Poetry magazine. I loved it when I first heard this poem few months ago - yes - heard it because this one too is worth listening to or at least reading aloud to hear the musicality in it.....

Here's how it starts.. Cherub-bee-dee, cherub-bee-dum...I can't stop saying that again and again! ;-)

Cherub-bee-dee how does a man
who doesn’t read English well know that cherub-bee-dum
those aren’t really words-bee-dee.
But birds. 

Cherub-bee-dum, he stumbles, reading to me
by the sliding glass door cherub-bee-dee, through which I watch
my brother play in the dum-dum-yard. 

Cherub-bee-dee, cherub-bee-dum

But for the third day in a row, I want you to listen to the poet read the poem instead of cutting and pasting the full poem here.

The editors discuss Monica Sok’s poem “ABC for Refugees” from the December 2017 issue of Poetry.

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About the poet: Monica Sok was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1990. She is the daughter of Cambodian refugees and the granddaughter of Em Bun, a master weaver and recipient of a National Heritage Fellowship. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University. Her chapbook Year Zero was selected by Marilyn Chin for a Poetry Society of America 30 and Below Chapbook Fellowship. Currently, she is the 2016-2018 Stadler Fellow at Bucknell University, where she is working on her first book of poems. ....                                            Photograph (c) Sy Abudu

You can follow her on Twitter at @monicasokwrites.