In Search of Liberty’s Station

(for HC and all)

Oh Lord, my Lord, we have witnessed hatred’s jaws
seek to rend the golden garment of our nation. We have
heard the sound of bullets, playing freeze tag with our
children, packing morgues like grocery bags. But here,
right here, our broken land still knows touch of farmers
tilling promise fields. We are purple twilight paths 

worn smooth from feet of Freedom’s travails. You have
seen the “all” of all of it, Oh Lord, my Lord, both terror’s
bloody irrigation and shoestrings tied to Democracy’s
march. Pa'lante to the locomotion of such steps, who
press on, however runover spirits of their heels may be. 
So, let every huddling pronoun rise, dance in masses

of Diversity—every stoop and village center, only 
be patrolled with badges of compassion. If we must

live, let it not be like food for blue line bullets. Here, 
right here, let amity find merry weather in hallowed 
blocks of bubble tea and chaat, hot dogs grilling trash
talk, sweet potato pie and—dare I say it—Old Bay

vegan Sloppy Joes. Yes, Lord. Yes. We are graffiti 
riding train track thunder, all-race rail cars hitched—
and no engineer of cowards can derail us. And so, 
we ride in search of Liberty’s station—not to linger 
there, whenever wheels arrive, but to invite more 
“dark past” travelers into seats like cradle rock rows.

Let every Star of David join hands with Assalamu
Alaikums, every Hallelujah pew lock arms with 
Buddhists bells—every Native Nation, still on trails
of sobbing earth, know the “All aboard” of rail car 
rest—and even Humanism's highest priests say, 
“Amen” to emancipation's open coach, for it belongs 

to us, Oh Lord, Our Lord—as much as every infant 
rider belongs to saddles of a mother’s hips—but 
never half a coin as much as we belong to you.

For All the Deciduous Pictures

Where trees grow branches, Afro-puffed with green,
though Hawk's breath of repression strips each limb,
I watch their buds fulfill their pledge to rising,
spring up along the sweet gum path within.

The cold’s a field of locks, like cell block cities—
like icy walls and barbed wire chilling hope,
where beating winds make frost the flesh of cages,
conscripting Arctic leg irons on the soul.

Each snowfall that visits stacks up shivers,
piles forsaken dreams, heavy on the bark,
while whips of blizzards crack, mocking forest faith;
lashings of despair never miss their mark.

Confinement is the cruelest storm that howls,
both through bean slot canopies, cross bar crowns.
When January's ice tests sanity's pluck,
loneliness handcuffs; angst remains unbound.

Yet joy lives in the cells of seeds that climb,
all sap that slows, but never freezing yields.
I know knife-tip seasons cut like Glasgow smiles,
and some would count us deadwood in the fields.

Though glacial days incarcerate this timber,
rebirth cannot be vanquished from the grove.
No winter can detain the roots of spirits
or leaves of freedom when the mind unfolds.

Nasser Hospital | 2023

1.

Candy in the palm
of a little girl’s hand

falls to blood-soaked
floor. After her gasping

becomes cooling board
sleep, only the mortuary

is awake. 

2.

In the emergency room,
a father makes swaddling

clothes of white sheets
frayed by faith in war. 

Cradling his daughter’s 
stillness in the cocoon

of this fabric, his left arm
is king of pillows. 

If this were bedtime for
the living, lullabies 

would spread their
blanket songs.

3.

In the emergency room,
this same father

uses the index finger
of his right hand

to wipe away caking
of blood, orange-tinted

with tears, from hematomas 
just above his baby’s

brows. He kisses the paleness
of her eyelids—never again

to know blinking. Before
she is zipped up in a black

plastic bag, carried away
to the cemetery, tell me,

which of their faces is
more the tombstone?

Tell me.

For the Interrupted All

When 1963 remembers the Old Man tells me
of other kinds of abortions, Mother Brooks—
how wails of grief, well-funded by occupying
forces of glass and shrapnel, in cahoots with

dynamite sponsors, will also not let you forget:
Beware the Ides of September, The Bombing-
ham Strip, the list poem of crucifixion that
forever calls four little girls by their first

names: Cynthia, Carole, Addie Mae, Denise—
all who never saw sweet 16 candles wishing
or met a prom night dancing dress—Sarah 
Collins Rudolph, Addie’s baby sister, whose

eyes were blown into red-drunk caves of Nakba, 
by a hate supreme—A Hate Supreme. Digging 
under the rubble, OG Time tells me she survived—
but this you know, Mother Brooks—resurrected 

by folks, themselves more shattered than 
wrecking ball bricks. On an exploding Autumn 
Sunday, their shrieks were sprinting sirens, 
as chariots of excavating hands swung low. 

There is no putting their screams to bed,
Ms. Gwendolyn—no hearing device made
to mute tinnitus of sorrow—although I have
tried, even after a freight car of years. For

they are still digging, under that other rubble, 
down by another bloody riverside, where 
fingers turn to shovels, hearing in bomb blast 
wind the voices of Gaza’s dim killed children.

Saying American Grace

(Circa 2024)

Thank you for the bomb I did not receive,

for the nourishment of burns, that will never
know garnishment of gauze—for pregnancies
of blisters that never lit volcanoes over my
swelling expectancy. Who am I, twenty-weeks

in prenatal ticking, that your antibiotics are
mindful of me—that water, not piped from 
polio's belly, should visit your daughter's 
table in caravans of glassware twinkling?
Our Father, in American Heaven, thank

you for the ICU that will never shake its
head at place settings of barbecued hope, 
or my first born, close by sleeping, also on
the trauma menu. If they brought him into
Al Aqsa Hospital, a donkey cart of pieces,

I would not be able to tell you. Thank you, 
Chef, O Holy King of missile strike cutlery, 
whose name is now a restaurant fan, turned 
on with IDF switches, spinning like a Leni
Riefenstahl frame—Thank You and every 

Red Zone hand that helped prepare this
tabletop of gleeful othering—who never 
served White Phosphorous through my
ceiling—and only shared menu plans
of my death with Pain.

Poem for Black Trump Supporters
at the Republican National Convention

Your electric sliding flesh
is always welcome

at the MAGA 3-Star table.
After all, if he should 

win, you will be 
the signature flaming

dish.

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