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In Chiem’s book, being a “private person” can happen when alone with someone who somehow speaks the same language as you, it can happen as a result of a joint smoked alone in an empty hallway, or it can happen when dancing to a Broken Social Scene song that plays over and over. It’s an intimacy all on its own.

You hear a ding and reach for your pocket. It’s a text or an email. Or perhaps a notification from Facebook telling you that someone “liked” something you wrote. It might be an Instagram photo from a vacationing friend, awash in golden light and sipping an early morning mimosa. It might even be your spouse, reminding you to pick up pet food on the way home.

This ding reaches you everywhere—messages, alerts, and texts floating into the palm of your hand at random. They interrupt thoughts, conversations, and musings—always tearing you back to a world that demands your response. Such is life in the 21st century, where everyone is only a thumb’s tap away.

The following poems were generated by workshops led by Underground Writing, a nonprofit organization that leads creative writing classes in migrant, incarcerated, recovery, and other at-risk communities in Northern Washington. I belong to this group.

Ever since I was born you’ve been there. You were there when my biological mom would relapse and let my sister and I run around free. You were there again as I began to realize how to work on my own and take care of my mom and little sister.

From a black nylon rope around
her neck hangs a silver instrument
bouncing on her tummy as she walks

I’ve known of your existence
from the time I was 4 years old.
You were always told to me
like a scary story, something
from a dark fairy tale.

I, too, sing America
in hospital beds,
wires stuck to my skull
with heavy glue.

When I look in the mirror
I see a girl who’s hurting
but still puts a smile on her face for people.

I have to swallow the time they’re gonna try to give me and more
And if I don’t try to swallow they will force it down my throat.

Politics is remote. I want to reach it, but I can’t see it. I can’t see where it goes on. I do hear of it. And when I do, I hear Greeks talking, saying the same things, saying them more beautifully. Kalon. Beautiful and fair. “Last of all comes the tyrannical man; about whom we have once more to ask, how is he formed out of the democratical? and how does he live, in happiness or in misery?”