American Muslim chilren
Hey Ayat, we were an odd
couple, haunting the library
for magical books,
deciding how and where
we wanted to work…
Our symbiosis
Your linguistic ticket to
4th grade status—
and my meal ticket
Hey Aayat, forget that
you worked hard
raising your reading
from 1.4
to 4.
Forget how
You sweated in your
Hijab,Cali sun streaming
through the hallway where we worked
Your seat wet with sweat
when I insisted you break for water.
Forget how my eyes welled up when…
When you read the word “chlorophyll”
with
a li’l Arabic seasoning.
Forget our enchanted
moment, our turning point,
finding a book
on your birthplace, your
religion
Hey Ayat, I apologize—
It’s America first and
American Heroes must
Kill
Kids like you in Yemen—
But, “God will sort it out…”
When they get to Heaven.
And one day you’ll understand
Why
American heroes kill for pipe-
lines…
© 2016. Raymond Nat Turner,The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.
Raymond Nat Turner is an acclaimed performing artist and educator, and an official in the National Writers Union.
Find much more of his work at http://upsurgejazz.com
The Black Alliance for Peace just launched its North-South Project for People(s)-Centered Human Rights. Ajamu Baraka and Margaret Kimberley discussed why this project is so necessary.
“How do you fight racism in a land where racism obviously exists, the far right is ascendent, but race is not accepted as a category?”
The fall of the Syrian government is being heralded by Western liberals and "leftists." The collapse is not the liberation that is being presented by the US and its corporate media partners.
A French criminal court has convicted a journalist for writing dissident history about Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Jordan Neely's killing and the subsequent acquittal of Daniel Penny can be seen as part of the reactionary existential panic felt by whites whenever the country experiences growing economic…
