Dima Hilal - Two Poems

ghaflah - the sin of forgetfulness

by dima hilal

born by the mediterranean
our mothers bathe us in orange-blossom water
olive trees and cedars
strain to give us shade
we come to america where they call our land
the East meaning different/dark/dirty
we soon forget
our grandmothers combed hair like ours
we wish our hair blonde our eyes and skin light
we know barbie
looks better than scheherezade
we think french makes us sophisticated so
we greet each other bonjour instead of salaam
proud of our colonizer's tongue
we forget the Qur'an sings in arabic

when we arrived
our fingernails pierced the palms of our hands
we stared at pictures of our children
eye sockets carved out by rubber bullets
on the 10 o'clock news
our brothers and sisters spit up blood and teeth
and CBS declared them "terrorists"

now we turn away from bruises and broken bones
body counts and funerals
we know we cannot help anyway
we forget we once stood on the same ground
they die on
we look for the arabia packaged by the west
we escape into clubs to watch
blonde belly dancers named jasmine
sashay almost naked
we eat pasty hummous at eight dollars a plate
and tell each other
how much we miss our home

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Bedouin Eyes

by Dima Hilal

My hands turn to claws, tear
newspapers declare war
the West erupts against
those backward Arabs
my throat bubbles, chokes with acid hate
rage and salt water form cesspools
in my Bedouin eyes and blind me
my breathing shallow
mind numb and calculated

the gardenia scent of my country
has never seemed farther away
I see your guns aimed
in the name of justice;
tearing flesh, stopping a breath
in mid-exhale, a heart
in the second half of its beat
when you scream terrorists
I hear the prayer of my family
a tight canopy against the falling sky
while you count mortalities, I see faces
that look like mine

now my lips will not form the words of Allah
as I feel our city shudder, then
break and collapse onto itself
my lungs save their wind for curses
as my people, bruised, cannot rise
and I welcome
the nausea which overtakes
weakens
forces my body to sink to the floor

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