Rites of Return and Ascent
Conceived in Kuwait, born in the South,
first memory is Damascus,
and the first and only time I saw Palestine,
I stood, bare feet on the pebbles of a dead shore,
reaching for a thin line of indistinct hills against the far rim.
I was eleven then and my father had never said the word palestine
where I could hear it, and he never would.
Ah, the many false aliyahs of empire:
rescued because we’re useful and can be peeled
from the fruit of people we would otherwise fight
alongside, and instead taught to resent them,
counted only to outnumber or eclipse our kin,
honed like an arrow for the quiver of misery’s middle-managers.
We, that tasty slice for bland palates who eat the world
and call it: civilized, excellent, a fair & balanced diet,
let us not petition fame and power
for merely the veneer of fake aaliyah,
some iridescent heaven
of oil rig oil spill and oil slick,
with drill sites of desire to extract us
from homes, families, hardship—
from all that offers life and honesty.
