1
Brimstone
My father and I would go swimming ever since I was young
Enough to wrap a whole hand around one finger,
Old enough to know it was his.
We would soak in the Jordan sun and the Dead Sea,
He’d always make me float straight,
Swimming towards the horizon.
Me, him, heat, and water.
My father and I sit watching the Arabic news,
Pictures of a Saudi Arabian Muslim man swimming on our screen;
He was stoned to death for being gay.
My dad told me that man deserved it.
My body, filled with heat, until my forehead was a river.
Me, him, heat, and water.
That night, I locked all the doors in my bathroom and clogged the cracks.
I kept the shower hot until my mirror sobbed with me.
I sat mid bathroom,
Praying to Allah, that the steam would straighten out the queerness stitched into my skin.
Hoping smoke and asthma would choke the life out of me,
I sat mid bathroom,
Letting the haze hog my father’s words into my ears.
Watercolor his face onto my eyelids.
Yearning for the heat to evaporate the life out of my body,
Until my soul was swimming amongst the mist
People like my father,
Believe my worship should not live, because my queerness does.
People like my father,
Who believe we can only swim towards the horizon in a straight line.
As if there is a set path to reach the sun.
As if love only has one start and one end,
And a pathway with no arcs.
As if it wasn't colorful,
Or gay.
As if the sky wasn't it's prayer rug,
And it too didn't prostate?
Allah,
Tell my father your love isn't selective.
Tell him that if i was that man,
If they had pinned my body against a brick wall
Carved a bloody prayer onto my skin
Watched my wounds weep red
My face birth a festering blue child,
Saw it seep yellow
If even in my death I was a rainbow,
If i had stood there, still queer
But still muslim,
Tell him you would have saved me.
That if he had held me and my queerness with love ,
And we had cried together,
Our tears of worship would soothe hell fires into a calm wave,
And we could swim towards the horizon.
Me, him, heat and water.
Enough to wrap a whole hand around one finger,
Old enough to know it was his.
We would soak in the Jordan sun and the Dead Sea,
He’d always make me float straight,
Swimming towards the horizon.
Me, him, heat, and water.
My father and I sit watching the Arabic news,
Pictures of a Saudi Arabian Muslim man swimming on our screen;
He was stoned to death for being gay.
My dad told me that man deserved it.
My body, filled with heat, until my forehead was a river.
Me, him, heat, and water.
That night, I locked all the doors in my bathroom and clogged the cracks.
I kept the shower hot until my mirror sobbed with me.
I sat mid bathroom,
Praying to Allah, that the steam would straighten out the queerness stitched into my skin.
Hoping smoke and asthma would choke the life out of me,
I sat mid bathroom,
Letting the haze hog my father’s words into my ears.
Watercolor his face onto my eyelids.
Yearning for the heat to evaporate the life out of my body,
Until my soul was swimming amongst the mist
People like my father,
Believe my worship should not live, because my queerness does.
People like my father,
Who believe we can only swim towards the horizon in a straight line.
As if there is a set path to reach the sun.
As if love only has one start and one end,
And a pathway with no arcs.
As if it wasn't colorful,
Or gay.
As if the sky wasn't it's prayer rug,
And it too didn't prostate?
Allah,
Tell my father your love isn't selective.
Tell him that if i was that man,
If they had pinned my body against a brick wall
Carved a bloody prayer onto my skin
Watched my wounds weep red
My face birth a festering blue child,
Saw it seep yellow
If even in my death I was a rainbow,
If i had stood there, still queer
But still muslim,
Tell him you would have saved me.
That if he had held me and my queerness with love ,
And we had cried together,
Our tears of worship would soothe hell fires into a calm wave,
And we could swim towards the horizon.
Me, him, heat and water.
2
Claws
It was one of those days, where the sunshine blew air kisses onto the river,
And it gleamed.
My mother and I sitting on the edge of its sandy horizon,
Where dirt splits water and grass like the prophet Moses.
My mother's hijab hugs her head the same way she cradles me and my sister.
And we stare into the river,
Only ever making eye contact through water.
I watch her image, the same way I do executions.
She pulls the pin from her hijab,
Stabs it into the dirt,
Trying to find some way to hurt this land back.
Unravels the scarf, unwinding a twenty-year-old marriage to her religion.
Lets it drift through the wind,
Her hand shaped limp, still lingering through the air.
My mother, giving her life back to its creator
Weeping into the river
So there is no evidence she ever cried.
But my tears, proof enough.
A white supremacist becomes president,
And the first thing my mother does is give up,
And it saddens me down to the bone.
An unjust arthritis crippling us both.
The whole nation in a coma
And my mother weeping at its bedside
For all her nameless sisters in hijabs
And their daughters, and hers.
And I am shameful because
My mother does not quit
My mother, runs over oceans for her children.
She does not weep into rivers.
Mom I am not saying it’s not okay to give up,
But I am saying
When you do make sure your hand is a claw.
Make sure their skin finds a graveyard in your fingernails
That you staple your hijab to the nape of your neck before you let them take it
That us Muslim women, do not get buried without digging ourselves out
Us Muslim women do not flinch at the name of a white man,
Us Muslim women, do lose faith sometimes
But us Muslim women, have a love for Allah like boomerangs,
The minute it leaves it is already on its way back.
Today, we Muslim women may give up
Today, our hijabs may lay in the river,
But tomorrow,
When we do الوضوء.
The cleansing before we pray
And we turn the faucet on to worship Allah, for the fifth time that day,
Our white hijabs will seep out,
Tear-soaked and wrinkled but still as wearable as they have always been.
And we let their president know,
Twenty years of faith do not blow in the wind that easily.
3
Dear Homeland
To the olive tree branches
And blood-filled roots of Palestine,
I give this poem.
I give you this ink, these blue life lines,
I give you each breath between my stanzas,
I give you these words in place of the silence
Israel has forced upon you.
My grandmother tells me of the days she swung on playground swings,
How going back and forth felt like time travel,
At 6 years old she watched
Your blue skies turn Crimson,
Like God was bleeding with you,
Like you were bleeding for him.
He held back the rain like he was holding back tears,
He held back the rain so he wouldn't wash away your agony,
He held back the rain because there was already too much pouring there,
Tears and blood
Falling on your holy ground
Towns that only rain ash
She tells me how houses became mausoleums.
How front lawns turned into graveyards
One explosion at a time
How they claimed these Arabian oceans,
Forced our people to make their own tear-filled rivers,
Slit their throats so the currents would run faster
How they hung our children's bodies
Like chandeliers
Made their angels shine over your towns
How the cinders of our carcasses fed your soil
You have been inheriting our dead
Since the genesis of this genocide
Dear homeland,
I want to save you from this story
To speak to my children about your olive tree branches
And not have their roots engulfed in blood
I want to make sure their veins never stand as still as the Dead Sea
I want to tell them of the war we’ll someday win
And have their heartbeats quicken
And their blood dance
I want them to have a party
With their ancestors between their bones
To hold this
Red, white, green, and black flag
With the pride of knowing
It's survived a massacre
When the world hears their voices,
They'll believe in the supernatural
They'll get chills from the ghosts
In their dialect
Every time one of my children speaks
They will feel their ancestors resurrected in victory
Until then, I beg of you
Hold on.
To close your ears to the explosions,
To only feel the fire within me
To witness the blessings within you
Dear Palestine,
I promise I will one day build a swing set underneath your olive tree branches,
And my children and I will go time traveling through the essence of survival,
And we'll smile at the small streams our people have left
And God will finally let his tears fall
Like he's been saving them for us all along.
And blood-filled roots of Palestine,
I give this poem.
I give you this ink, these blue life lines,
I give you each breath between my stanzas,
I give you these words in place of the silence
Israel has forced upon you.
My grandmother tells me of the days she swung on playground swings,
How going back and forth felt like time travel,
At 6 years old she watched
Your blue skies turn Crimson,
Like God was bleeding with you,
Like you were bleeding for him.
He held back the rain like he was holding back tears,
He held back the rain so he wouldn't wash away your agony,
He held back the rain because there was already too much pouring there,
Tears and blood
Falling on your holy ground
Towns that only rain ash
She tells me how houses became mausoleums.
How front lawns turned into graveyards
One explosion at a time
How they claimed these Arabian oceans,
Forced our people to make their own tear-filled rivers,
Slit their throats so the currents would run faster
How they hung our children's bodies
Like chandeliers
Made their angels shine over your towns
How the cinders of our carcasses fed your soil
You have been inheriting our dead
Since the genesis of this genocide
Dear homeland,
I want to save you from this story
To speak to my children about your olive tree branches
And not have their roots engulfed in blood
I want to make sure their veins never stand as still as the Dead Sea
I want to tell them of the war we’ll someday win
And have their heartbeats quicken
And their blood dance
I want them to have a party
With their ancestors between their bones
To hold this
Red, white, green, and black flag
With the pride of knowing
It's survived a massacre
When the world hears their voices,
They'll believe in the supernatural
They'll get chills from the ghosts
In their dialect
Every time one of my children speaks
They will feel their ancestors resurrected in victory
Until then, I beg of you
Hold on.
To close your ears to the explosions,
To only feel the fire within me
To witness the blessings within you
Dear Palestine,
I promise I will one day build a swing set underneath your olive tree branches,
And my children and I will go time traveling through the essence of survival,
And we'll smile at the small streams our people have left
And God will finally let his tears fall
Like he's been saving them for us all along.