March 2024
My father calls from Istanbul to tell me
he’s on his way to Djibouti
There he will wait
for a summoning to Somalia
Most of my life people asked
___________________
never satisfied with my answer
456 stories woven from tongue split by fog
Thorns formed by travels of a wave
Thorns are the color of my mother’s lipstick
each time she spontaneously cut her hair
I always begged her not to do it I never understood until I did
Let’s talk about blast rock
When I grew up & took scissors to a mirror that first time I recorded it
advertised my brokenness to Facebook
fashioned myself into David Attenborough
describing some animal behaving strangely
& isn’t that the story of every polished headline?
But then $102,000 Raised for Man Who Donated His Enslavement Earnings
to Gaza Relief Efforts
& isn’t this how we survive: all of us who have been stolen from
giving goodness to someone else?
Of course newspapers don’t say he’s enslaved
They latch seventeen dollars & seventy-four cents
for 136 hours of work
to words like inmate prison labor
This is what happens
when data comes second-hand
Before I knew the words
genocide empire refugee
I took a coin purse full of questions to my father
He filled it with dew
that flew away from broken zipper
I can tell you how to mend a hole in a garment
but not how to trap air I failed physics
& somehow made it through high school
I failed stats four times in college
& never got a degree
I guess this is why I’m a poet
Don’t give me formulas
I have always been tired of counting but here I am
keeping track of how many faces of grieving parents
I can hold in my memory
Today March 25, 2024
Over 40,000¹ Palestinians murdered
with my tax dollars
Maybe I have a blood clot in my leg
Maybe it’s the flour massacre lodging into my body
Ebo Taylor makes promises about Victory
but I can’t help but be bitter
Angela Davis says Freedom is a Constant Struggle
but I am a toddler who wants everything now
___________________
¹Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, “Statistics on the Israeli Genocide in the Gaza Strip (07 October 2023-14 March 2024),” Instagram, March 14, 2024
This is the soul of my soul
Spoken by Khaled Nabhan as he cradled the body of his three-year-old granddaughter, Reem, killed in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza in November, 2023.
I loved her / too / I love them / all / Always will / A new violence blossoms inside my bosom / I sing onyx into its sharpness / Surely / this is what the ones who did this / are doing this / want / right? / I want to give them what they want / What they want is not laughter on playgrounds / I want to be the thing they love / which is not peace / Inside me / a ____ aches / I cannot type words I want for fear of being dragged away / Politicians don’t understand metaphor / This is a poem / This poem is not a threat / It is larger / Cradle this as promise / Our rage will bore into the next lives of those responsible / _________________ on all their futures / Every time they fall in love their hearts will break / Every mourning tear we cry will haunt them past their graves / Each time they return to earth it will be to feel the pain they caused / There is no redemption / There is no apology for this / Damn these fingernails of mine / Damn these nostrils / Were I a god / I would be the kind to be feared /
but / I / am only a mother
FATIMA-AYAN MALIKA HIRSI is a Black mother who writes beside forests and waters. Her writing strives to instigate action in service to world-building. Her work lives in Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, Elysium Review, Rise Up Review, and other portals. Her chapbooks are Moon Woman (Thoughtcrime Press) and EVERYTHING GOOD IS DYING (Deep Vellum Publishing). Her first full-length collection, DREAMS FOR EARTH, is forthcoming from Deep Vellum. Travel with her at fatimaayanmalikahirsi.com or on Instagram via @fatimaayanmalika.
