Tarik Dobbs

—2nd Place Winner of the 2020 Spotlight Award—

Tarik Dobbs is a queer, Arab American poet from Dearborn, MI. They have received fellowships from Bucknell Young Poets & the Hopwood Program. Their poems appear/forthcoming in Passages North, The Journal, & AGNI Magazine.

Contest Winner, Poetry

X-Ray Diptych in Ben Gurion Airport

By Tarik Dobbs

“The body compounds / lack: when the mother lacks light, does her child / inherit absence? Today, / I sleep in a room with no / blinds. Do I carry radiation/ like a sadness? Do I irradiate generations?”