The earliest Asian American poems in English date back to the late 1800s. The aesthetic and political heterogeneity of Asian American poetry has been occluded not only in our historical narratives of the development of Asian American literature but also in our perception and characterization of what Asian American poetry is or looks like. Poetry by racialized persons is almost always read as an appendage to the larger fields of English-language poetry and all poetics. The lyric, avant-garde poetry, American poetry, and others are too often presumed to be universal and overarching, and implicitly racially unmarked. Mei-mei Berssenbrugge is an experimental Asian American poet, whose poems can be read as both lyric and experimental at once. Berssenbrugge's career trajectory represents a unique case in contemporary avant-garde poetry. In her poetry, Prageeta Sharma does not shy away from references to South Asian identity or to India, but she resists giving in to what is demanded of her poems' (and her) commodification.