Layli Long Soldier holds a B.F.A. from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an M.F.A. from Bard College. Her poems have appeared in POETRY Magazine, The New York Times, The American Poet, The American Reader, The Kenyon Review, BOMB and elsewhere. She is the recipient of an NACF National Artist Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award. She has also received the 2018 PEN/Jean Stein Award, the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award, a 2021 Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature, and the 2021 Michael Murphy Memorial Poetry Prize in the UK. She is the author of Chromosomory (Q Avenue Press, 2010) and WHEREAS (Graywolf Press, 2017). She is currently pursuing a Masters in Law at the University of New Mexico. She resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

ESSAY

Now, You Will Listen

By LAYLI LONG SOLDIER

classmates’ eyes : my child’s face))) until my kid walked the halls))) to the school bathroom))))) to text me from a stall))) crying))) feeling what it is)))  to  really be))) little))) a hard  lesson in world history))) a lesson I’d learned))) at that age too.