I have heard so many poets say that they feel like out­casts, until they meet oth­er out­casts and dream­ers, peo­ple who seem to feel like them, and sud­den­ly they feel affirmed in their dif­fer­ence, and, as it turns out, their place in com­mu­ni­ty. It is like­ly what Safiya Sin­clair means in her ele­gant poem, ​“The Ragged and the Beau­ti­ful” pub­lished in the always engag­ing ​“immi­grant and refugee” jour­nal, The Bare Life Review, when she describes being ​“strange/​and unbe­long­ing” as, at the same time, being ​“per­fect­ly” beautiful.

The Ragged and the Beautiful

Doubt is a storming bull, crashing through

the blue-wide windows of myself. Here in the heart

of my heart where it never stops raining,

I am an outsider looking in. But in the garden

of my good days, no body is wrong. Here every

flower grows ragged and sideways and always

beautiful. We bloom with the outcasts,

our soon-to-be sunlit, we dreamers. We are strange

and unbelonging. Yes. We are just enough

of ourselves to catch the wind in our feathers,

and fly so perfectly away.