We used to play soccer in the monsoon rains. Through my windows, I can see acres of fields, Lying in the ruins of the wind. The poems in City of Rivers--the first full-length collection from 23-year-old wunderkind Zubair Ahmed--are clear and cool as a glass of water. Grounded in his childhood in Bangladesh, Ahmed's spare, evocative poems cast a knowing eye on the wider world, telling us what it's like to be displaced and replaced, relocated and dislocated. His poems are suffused with a graceful, mysterious pathos--and also with joy, humor, and longing--with the full range of human emotions. City of Rivers is a remarkable and precocious debut.