Just One Thing with Threa Almontaser

Threa’s cat modeling a ninja headband

The moment our poetry editors shared Threa Almontaser’s “I Crack an Egg“ with the rest of the staff, we fell into a collective fit of the OH-MY-GOSH-ACCEPT-IT-RIGHT-NOWs. Obviously, the folks at The Academy of American Poets felt the same; as the winner of their 2020 Walt Whitman Award, Threa’s collection The Wild Fox of Yemen is now forthcoming from Graywolf Press. Here Threa shares just one thing about her April issue poem:

“When I was a kid, I refused to eat eggs because I thought baby birds were inside, waiting to grow and get out. I’d hide them under sofas to stay warm and to help speed up the process, until my mom’s vacuum inevitably found and broke them. That’s when she told me chickens lay eggs for eating so they’re totally in the clear, and hens are the ones that lay eggs with the babies. I believed her for an embarrassingly long time.”