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
If the Democratic Party prevails in the midterm elections, Hakeem Jeffries will become the Speaker of the House of Representatives. But his decision to meet with Jared Kushner was a textbook case of…
A People(s)-Centered Human Rights framework rejects the liberal abstraction that makes a false symmetry between Iranian authoritarianism and U.S. imperialism, which obscures the fact that one is a…
“In the period since 1969, one can detect the same old close ties between right-wing U.S. academics, think tanks, foundations, and the U.S. Government…”
White supremacy works through institutions, and FEMA's formula for allocating disaster relief shows us how the state decides which neighborhoods are prioritized and which are left to suffer. Those in…
The IMF and World Bank are not subjects the corporate media cover in any real sense. Instead, their role is treated as unquestionably immutable and beneficial.
