the blueshift journal

the history goes, the first Intifada      was a rain    of teeth.

Shin Bet marvelled     at the beast    they created & became     a celebration

of bullets. this mid-east      Frankenstein. this brown      rebirth. these fangs bare.

& dripping.

 

i once found home     in the empty between    clenched jawlines.

& that was the street my mother       grew up where sand       n----- flew out of

the mouth   of a stranger,    who was settler     in this country.

that’s not      the point. i mean,    what does an immigrant call it

when     they have no home    to go back to?

 

once, i wrote down       history & it was not    a lie,

by which i mean     my hands were not     dripping,

i did not create       a massacre in the           erasure

& a white woman called me crazy        he’s just crazy & i

became body     of gritted teeth. of       rising smoke,

exhaust from the torched city of me.

 

are you beside yourself yet? / have you retreated to your white god

-forsaken sanctuary? / am i SECURITY THREAT / enough?

 

the history goes, Israeli      settler expansion was illegal    under international law.

until it wasn’t. that’s not      the point. the settlers were fleeing       religious

persecution, much like pilgrim        settlers fled for America. i mean,

what is colonization         if not an aftermath       of hands,

of men         searching for home?

 

& i am the wrong landmass       to beg a home       of. just barely

a floating        body. stone       who refused to dance       on water:

the oppressor knows not      your howl, the way you    splice

the air     & that      is freedom song.

 

video footage: israeli soldier    shoots child     armed     with

stone.     point blank.        a mother shrieks.      collapses.

empties          herself of wind.

 

i still don’t know what to do with my hands in history class.