The Speaker

The speakers of the poems throughout the collection share many qualities, aligning themselves with one another and the poet himself. The speaker is an adult male, although their age is never specified. While they live in America, they were born in Tehran, Iran. Their first language was Farsi, however having lived in America for so long, they remember very little of it and primarily speak English. The speaker moved to America at a young age with their mother and their father. They describe themselves as a poet at several points throughout the book.

The speaker is a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, which plays a central role in the majority of the poems. They describe themselves as having an insatiable hunger that they are constantly at odds with, desiring to satisfy their urges even though they are internally and externally destructive. In the series of poems whose...