Fargo Tbakhi

in the walgreens parking lot on 44th & Indian school, another massacre

sidles its way onto my screen. a bomb 
has struck a Gazan school, a tangle of limbs 
untangled. a cookout of cousins, their breaths
taken for granted, then un-granted, taken. 
at the walgreens on the corner of 44th & Indian school
(a street named for the phoenix Indian school, 
where indigenous children were forcibly taken, stripped
of their culture, their gutted histories baked 
into this asphalt on which my car rests, on which my feet
spring, and my feet carry with them a history 
steeped in theft, in forcibly taken, in prisons,  
displacement) i taste blood familiar 
as sea-stink on the breeze. o
may i note the streets i walk on, 
may i sing their massacres, may i bring my own 
to meet them. and, now, another of my own 
has leapt onto my phone screen 
on this street, at this walgreens, 
where i have stopped to purchase beard oil. 
the redbox outside offers asylum 
to a movie where a white man shoots a gun, 
a woman pilots a drone, two tongues
tangle together. o 
i deem our imaginations complicit. the sun 
is warming my skin: were i a patch of grass, i might be 
browned beyond repair. were i a troop of fog, 
i’d drift and smother the lenses of every cell phone. o
i am too human for all my metaphors, bridges 
i am too much body & too much america 
to cross. instead, i lean against the friendly wall. 
light my cigarette, suck down smoke to fog 
my only lungs. i roll the windows up & dribble 
beard oil into my palm, crane my neck godwards 
to see inside my mirror, & rub. 
greet my cheeks with the tips of my fingers, 
gentle as a father wiping soot from 
a baby’s neck. o my lungs 
tiptoe towards collapse, o 
i deem my imagination complicit: 
may my poems nibble at the mortar in our walls. 
i deem my language colonized:
may i find a way to sing death hard & strong.  
i massage my chin into submission. o 
skin of my father’s mother, o dear colonized 
mystery, o hands of prayer, of eating rice
pudding, of holding other hands,
of holding my phone & clutching
tight, fast, insisting on my anti-forgetting,
o thirsty, yearning, thirsty skin, o my people, 
my people, my people, my people, my people,
my people, my people, my people, my people,
my people, my people, my people, my people,
my people, my people, my people, my people, 
my people, my people, my people, my people,
my people, my people, my people, my people,
my people, my people, my people, my people,
my people, my people, my people, my people, o 
may i never find a quiet moment. 
may everything echo with each of your names, 
may i find you in every hair, in every parking lot, 
on every corner of land someone pretends to own,
in the boundless confines of every smoky breath.

 

Fargo Tbakhi (he/him) is a queer Palestinian-american performance artist from Phoenix, Arizona. He is the winner of the 2018 Ghassan Kanafani Resistance Arts Scholarship, a Pushcart nominee, and a 2020 Desert Nights, Rising Stars fellow. His work is published in the Shallow Ends, Gay Magazine, Foglifter, Mizna, Cosmonauts Avenue, Glass: a Journal of Poetry, Peach Mag, and elsewhere. He tweets @YouKnowFargo and probably wants to hold your hand.

 

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