It was not enough that you cut in front of me in line
Wearing your blue business suit with a bluetooth in your ear,
And that when I told you, hey, my aunt and I were in line here
You said “that towelhead is supposed to listen to men anyway, right?”
And when I got in your face, spitting, my face maroon with rage
I was the one told to “keep it respectful” by the cashier with blonde hair
That was not enough.
It was not enough that the day after 9/11, policemen broke down
The door to our house in Southern California and
Twisted my father’s and uncle’s arms inside out, face to the
Floor because how could men with gold chains and thick, dark hair
Be men who went down to Santa Monica beach to drink beers and hit on women and
Play volleyball even if they liked cricket more.
To see the blood drip down their faces in front of a child who only knows
The men she loves smell of pennies and there are taxis parked outside
That need attending to,
To hear them whisper “jao, jao” through cracked teeth,
To see the slices in their brown skin from metal restraints tightened
Only to learn after some walky-talky-ing that these were just brown men
living in a brown apartment in a brown corner of shit in a city
Whose sewers were overflowing with the blood and spines and aortas of brown men
That was not enough.
It was not enough to comb through our mountains and kill us with your guns,
Playing target practice with our children’s heads and then come onto your CNN and MSNBC
To talk about how freeing us from ourselves is the duty of the American soldier
Because being alive and brown is a fate worse than death.
It was not enough to raid our mosques.
It was not enough to violate our men in Guantanamo, and in Iraq, and in Afghanistan, and in Pakistan, and in Palestine.
It was not enough to rip our women from their gardens and stick them in Al-Hawl to shit in the hot sand.
Rivers of our blood and our bodies lost in the ocean
That was not enough.
Somehow I cannot believe that it will ever be enough
For us to attend your universities and collect degrees that
Force us to pretend there are two sides to every slaughter.
Or get a fancy government job where every week they will say
How valuable my diverse language skills are
Because even my mother tongue cannot belong me to alone and
Every breath on American soil must be either sacrifice or treason.
Your ancestors ripped the gold from our foremothers breasts and I cannot forget.
As long as the Kohinoor diamond is in Queen Elizabeth’s house and
I have to see her grandkids on Vanity Fair in the corner store
I will not forget at the museum or the coffee shop or on the sidewalk.
I taste blood in every last cup of tea
The taste of pennies in every herb, every spice, every drop of ocean water.
We are not civilized savages
Who will forget the road of bones upon which you have traveled.
With God as my witness, we are waiting, we are watching
At the grocery story, in Palestine, in Southern California
Look over your shoulder.
There is not enough desert
For us all.