Safia Elhillo is a Sudanese American poet whose work explores identity, migration, belonging, memory, language, love, and the complicated experience of living between cultures. Her poetry often combines intimate personal experiences with broader questions about heritage and displacement, creating a distinctive voice in contemporary American poetry.
Elhillo’s poems are known for their emotional honesty, lyrical language, and powerful exploration of identity. She frequently examines what it means to inherit a culture, remember a homeland, and build a sense of self in a new environment. Her writing can feel deeply personal while also speaking to readers who have experienced migration, cultural distance, family expectations, or the search for belonging.
Her poetry collections, including The January Children and Home Is Not a Country, have helped establish her as an important voice in contemporary poetry. Her work has also appeared in numerous literary publications and anthologies, bringing her poetry to a wide audience.
In this collection of Safia Elhillo poems, we will explore some of her notable and widely discussed works, looking at their themes, imagery, language, and emotional depth. From poems about ancestry and displacement to reflections on love, womanhood, memory, and home, Elhillo’s writing demonstrates how poetry can transform personal experiences into powerful literary expressions.
Whether you are discovering Safia Elhillo for the first time or already familiar with her work, these poems offer an opportunity to explore one of the distinctive voices shaping contemporary American poetry.
A Memory of Us
when i think of us i think of the lakewater
near longtown, what might not technically
constitute a lake but i prefer that word for
the open mouth of its vowel, how it called
us to its throat & held us there, in the sun,
the high points of our faces slick with light
& its arc around our shoulders, the soft
gathering of flesh around our knees,
the lone chair we found near the shore
where we took turns posing, jutting out
an eloquent hip, cackling in the bright language
of flowers for whom i downloaded an app
& learned their names: beautyberry, yarrow,
cornus florida, black-eyed susan, & you,
& you, my bright hibiscus, my every color
Ode to Sudanese-Americans
basma & rudy were first each holding
a mirror in her arms where i could see
my face as their faces & we pierced
our noses & wore gamar boba
in our ears & everyone at the party
thought them hoop earrings & in the new york years
i crowd smoky bars alongside ladin
& shadin & majid & linda & nedal
atheel & amir & elkhair & mo & mohammed & mo
& we are forever removing our shoes in each other’s
apartments ashing cigarettes
into the incense burner making tea
with the good dried mint our mothers taught us
to keep in the freezer next to the chili
powder from home making songs & dinner
& jokes in our parents’ accents & i am funniest
when i have two languages to cocktail
when i can say remember & everyone was there
the rented room at the middle school on sundays
where our parents volunteered to teach us arabic
to watch us bleat alef baa taa thaa & text
our american boyfriends that we were bored
& at restaurants everyone asks if we are related
& we say yes we do not date because we are probably
cousins we throw rent parties & project the video
where albabil sing gitar alshoug & i am not
the only one crying not the only one made & remade
by longing the mutation that arabic makes of my english
metallic noises the english makes in my arabic
we ululate at each other’s weddings we ululate at the club
& sarah & hana make the mulah vegan & in english safia
spells her name like mine but pronounces it
like purified sews a patch of garmasees
to the back of my denim jacket we wash our underwear
in the sink & make group texts on whatsapp
we go home & take pictures of the pyramids
we go home & take pictures of the nile we move
to other cities & feel doubly diasporic
& your cousin’s coworker’s little sister emails me
a list of bigalas in oakland brings me crates
of canned fava beans from her own parents’
basement & i say sudanese-american & mean also
british sudanese & canadian & australian & raised
in the gulf azza & yousra & amani & yassmin
& it’s true that my people are everywhere
the uncles driving taxis at the end of our nights
the pharmacist who fills my prescription
who is named for the mole denoting beauty
adorning her left cheek guardian spirits of my every
hookah bar of my every untagged photograph
of crop tops & short shorts & pierced cartilage & tattoos
of henna & headscarves & undercuts & shaved heads
my tapestries embroidered with hundreds
of little mirrors glinting like sequins in the changing light.
Application for asylum
how did you learn fear?
i crossed a body of water
how did you learn fear?
i grew a new american body it was the summer [ ] died
& now?
i don’t like to be touched
what do you do?
i keep having the dream where my brother is dead i wake up & can’t remember where he lives
where do you live?
broken dishes in the water
where do you live?
[ ] died teenaged & his brother died too they were moonfaced & dark
where do you live?
we came here to be safe we crossed a body of water
where did you hide?
[ ] was killed in the summer in the country we asked to keep us
what do you hide?
it makes the bleeding brand new
what did you lose?
they were identical twins they look like my brother broken dishes in the water i don’t know where we’ll go
Asmar
for Charif S.
not black our grandmothers insist & point
to vague & arid swathes across the map
arabia’s tribes conveniently nomadic to place
wherever blood begins to show a touch
of dark or daughters do not fear as they
are told the hot turmeric of the sun
allow instead its fingers’ pull of color
to the surface of the body kept
cloistered for generations attempt
at manmade white with creams & veils & fire
to kill the curl hair oiled & brushed out thin
so of course i hear the song that names it
asmar asmarani & hear my own dark name
i shake out the dark froth of my hair
i shake out the dark froth of my hair
the man in the silver shop says sudan
really but you look so clean ya asmar
& in an emirate by the water
at a party my girls & i are scrubbed
& polished with our eyelids painted gold
& yes we gleam & yes all day we tugged
the sun into our copper mouths
hair swollen in the heat forest of
acacia trees impenetrable though
a man dressed all in white thobe bluing in the
clean cold air conditioning from his car
rolls down the window & caws to his friends
“العبيد هنا” the niggers are here
“العبيد هنا” the niggers are here
our mothers debark a copper child on
each hip american future bluing
each life to match its new passport
& now & here the option to name the
asmar something new to pretend the word
in our new language is no longer black
despite bilad al sudan land of the
blacks as if our arabic will pale us
or blur the target disguise us as some
other other some more desirable
dusk as if the bullets will hear our sons’
sorghum inflections & bend to find some
black that holds up against language & sea
black that holds up against language & sea
black the only name assigned my body
that ever felt like mine black my hunted
kin my hunted blood & black my only
country & asmar & asmarani
& black that does not wait until called
a nigger or wait to be asked who
taught me to speak an arab’s arabic
or offered a window to some vaguer
brown to opt out of black to cling to the
vague & arid swathes of map ready
to fictionalize my beginnings i
unfurl in my sun worship to the dark
markings of the alphabet that named me.
FOR MY FRIENDS, IN REPLY TO A QUESTION
I’m okay. And, of course, I’m not,
but I go through the motions. I wake up
to the alarm’s howl, even when the word
in my body is no. I dress in livid colors.
I blacken the hairs of each eyebrow. I bake
& braise & pickle. I write & read & lose
hours to the blur of the television. I sit
for hours in the bath, my skin puckering.
I don’t know if I’ll ever go home again.
I don’t know who I’ve seen for the last time.
The Arabic comes back to me in streaks
of paint, verb forms & vocabularies
I may never again have occasion to use.
My days smudge into one another & it’s not
that I am afraid. It’s as if I am watching it
all happen below, & I am somewhere above
the room, wondering if the rice is burning.
I am somewhere above the room, watching
my new aches, watching the news as if
I am reading it in a novel. I look up
the names of people I knew in childhood,
learn their new & angular faces, their
faraway lives. My grandfather pixelates
into a smile & I work my creaking muscles
to replicate it. I do not ask if we will ever
meet again, I do not ask him to read to me,
or for anything that will make me long.
I dull it with sugar & oil, with cooking shows,
with sleep. I sleep twelve hours each night
& in my dreams I am fleeing a war, in my dreams
I am touching the faces of my friends, we are
each one of us touching, & even in the dream
we are afraid.
First Warm Sunday of the Year
it’s 1 a.m. in los angeles & i am trying
to finish this after putting off all day
first to meet mo at the cafe & eat toasts
thick with ricotta & lemon, lemon like
the sun breaking through clouds,
& it’s the first time in weeks i’ve been
able to stay all day on my feet & this
makes me want to say yes & keep
saying it, yes when hanin calls & says
come for lunch & i do, stopping first
to buy little presents for her apartment
at the gourmet deli, & when we sit
on her couch with plates balanced
on our knees watching a video
of two women recording a podcast
about friendship, i think for a moment
maybe i should go home & write
but there she sits, my sweetest
& littlest cousin, tiniest sister, who made
chicken & called me over
to eat it with her, what if not that
is the important work i’m meant for
& when she wants ice cream we put on
our shoes & everyone is out on the strip
enjoying the bright weather, & i walk home
& listen to the song nick sent me years ago
made by sampling the music box i’ve had
since childhood, & in the apartment the light
is streaming & christopher is sleeping sweetly
with an arm thrown across his face, & when
he wakes he shares his food & brings
the nice cloth napkins out across our laps
& at raneen & hisham’s we together make
a salad with a task for each of our hands,
raneen cutting tiny tomatoes while i shake
a vinaigrette inside a jar, hisham putting bowls
out on the round table & together we talk
into the night until i am sleepy then awake again
& still have not written but also have
& have so much, & my friends, my loves,
sweet faces i memorize & kiss, this is
my joyful work, making that which is worth
recording, my tenderest & curly-haired,
text me always a page from the books
you are reading, send me always three
voice notes in a row, my most beloved, email me
always the draft of your poem, sing to me,
tell me always the same stories, repeat yourselves,
write to me, thank you, thank you, may we
always stay up too late
1000
my roommate one year in college
would say of my smallness
that any man who found me attractive
had a trace of the pedophilic
& i would shrink newly girled
twenty-one with my eyebrows
plucked to grownup arches sprouting
back every three weeks
in sharp little shoots already men
have tried to steal me
in their taxis corral me into alleyways
of the new city already
the demand for my name though
no one ever asks how old i am
though no one ever did i feel creaking
& ancient in the repetition
of it all i feel my girlhood gone for
generations my entire
line of blood crowded with exhausted
women their unlined faces
frozen in time with only a thickness
about the waist a small shoot
of gray to belie the years
i make up names to hand
to strangers at parties
i trim years from my age & share without
being asked that i am
fifteen seventeen & no one blinks
no one stops wanting
i am disappeared like all the girls
before me around me
all the girls to come
everyone thinks
i am a little girl & still
they hunt me still they show their teeth
i am so tired i am
one thousand years old one thousand
years older when touched.
Ode to Gossips Poem
i was mothered by lonely women some
of them wives some of them with
plumes of smoke for husbands all lonely
smelling of onions & milk all mothers
some of them to children some to old names
phantom girls acting out a life only half
a life away instead copper kitchenware
bangles pushed up the arm fingernails rusted
with henna kneading raw meat with salt
with coriander sweating upper lip
in the steam weak tea hair unwound
against the nape my deities each one
sandal slapping against stone heel sandal-
wood & oud bright chiffon spun
about each head coffee in the dowry china
butter biscuits on a painted plate crumbs
suspended in eggshell demitasse & they
begin i heard people are saying
i saw it with my own eyes [ ]'s daughter
a scandal she was wearing [ ]
& not wearing [ ] can you imagine
a shame a shame
A Memory of Us
when i think of us i think of the lakewater
near longtown, what might not technically
constitute a lake but i prefer that word for
the open mouth of its vowel, how it called
us to its throat & held us there, in the sun,
the high points of our faces slick with light
& its arc around our shoulders, the soft
gathering of flesh around our knees,
the lone chair we found near the shore
where we took turns posing, jutting out
an eloquent hip, cackling in the bright language
of flowers for whom i downloaded an app
& learned their names: beautyberry, yarrow,
cornus florida, black-eyed susan, & you,
& you, my bright hibiscus, my every color
Self-Portrait With No Flag
i pledge allegiance to my
homies to my mother’s
small & cool palms to
the gap between my brother’s
two front teeth & to
my grandmother’s good brown
hands good strong brown
hands gathering my bare feet
in her lap
i pledge allegiance to the
group text i pledge allegiance
to laughter & to all the boys
i have a crush on i pledge
allegiance to my spearmint plant
to my split ends to my grandfather’s
brain & gray left eye
i come from two failed countries
& i give them back i pledge
allegiance to no land no border
cut by force to draw blood i pledge
allegiance to no government no
collection of white men carving up
the map with their pens
i choose the table at the waffle house
with all my loved ones crowded
into the booth i choose the shining
dark of our faces through a thin sheet
of smoke glowing dark of our faces
slick under layers of sweat i choose
the world we make with our living
refusing to be unmade by what surrounds
us i choose us gathered at the lakeside
the light glinting off the water & our
laughing teeth & along the living
dark of our hair & this is my only country
