Dreams for Earth: Poems

Fatima-Ayan Malika Hirsi is a Black mother who spends time with forests and waters on land of the T’Sou-ke Nation. Her work strives to instigate action in service to world-building, social change, and collaboration. Her poems live in Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, MAYDAY, Torch, Rise Up Review, and other portals. She is a fellow of the Pink Door Writing Retreat, the Anaphora Arts Writing Residency, and In Surreal Life. She is the author of the chapbooks EVERYTHING GOOD IS DYING and Moon Woman, and her debut full-length collection, DREAMS FOR EARTH, is forthcoming from Deep Vellum in 2025.

"Offering profound reflections on our past, present and future fractals, Fatima-Ayan Malika Hirsi carefully threads the needle to pinpoint articulations of a world in perpetual motion. These poems are rich with whale song, Sun Ra earthbound, sonic landscapes where the dream and the material collide to reveal how the act of creation is diurnal, ceaseless, and inevitably, our greatest asset. DREAMS FOR EARTH is an intimate look at the interiority of motherhood — how structures of neocolonialism and climate catastrophe shape the self and the worlds around it in various forms and fervor. This collection is a vibrant tapestry of all our various wounds and the flowers that bloom in between them." —Ashia Ajani, author of Heirloom"To read Fatima-Ayan Malika Hirsi’s DREAMS FOR EARTH is to be held by an effervescent river teeming with the fury of a thousand disquieted beings. Bridging earth and sky, the poems awaken as a flock of herons circling overhead, offering searing witness to the infinite atrocity that is police violence, Zionist occupation and shattered genealogy. Amidst the mind-numbing turbulence of modernity, Fatima conjures a dreamcurrent for us to ride that sends anger earthward so we might recall how ‘to absorb the sky’s sermon’ and ‘haunt all those who dare unbraid your glory.’" —shō yamagushiku, author of shima"DREAMS FOR EARTH is a strikingly visceral account of the tension between worlds: the one that is ending, the one that could’ve been, and the many constantly looming with every unprecedented moment. From poem to poem, Fatima-Ayan Malika Hirsi holds the reader’s hand in the dark corner of a bucolic scene and evinces the felt impact of collapse as it happens simultaneously, surely, and ominously. Hirsi carefully but masterfully unveils the ways in which moments designated for joy now require us to bear the necessary weight of empathy and care, and the responsibilities we have to each other." —Sasha Banks, author of america, MINE“To be honestly alive today is to experience the breadth of rage and grace that Hirsi gathers together in this courageous, moving book. Resisting empire’s assaults on our shared humanity, these poems witness and face the unbearable brutality that empire has unleashed upon our kin. When it feels impossible to say anything more, Hirsi offers us much needed words to keep birthing with the world we need, the one that is possible because of yarrow, mango, ocean, olive, keffiyehs, and the medicine that grows when we reciprocate earth’s gifts with love, gratitude, and attention. She reaches deep into the reserves of life that mothers conceive and tend so tenaciously, pulling up seeds, grief, songs, petals, and prayer to keep our spirits aligned with the earth.” —Rita Wong