Three Poems
Courtesy of Kifah Hamdan
open letter to the residents of kirkland, wa
this was your first protest. no mask
anymore, excuses dried up in the lake
front, no more. here they have built you
some kind of temple for your kind of people,
kinda people who caught my foot in
the door, closed the window and waved
kind people of kirkland goodbyes. this
was you looking west to the Duwamish name
from your tapas and wine. good for you! happy
our shouts were audible from your family boats,
kirkland, this was something new. so long living in
white names on white shores, how many times did you
turn a downward eye to the city? those skyscrapers
those firs blocked your view gave you clean air
ways to walk for family gelato or music festivals,
pretty café pictures on the timeline,
nobody’s waiting for you
anymore, you’re the rebels, at least you were, so
content in your white namesake and lake days,
your salt pillar suburb
halfway through happy retirement,
kirkland. how does it feel to breathe so deep.
this was your first protest. how does it feel
to know you too walk on dark earth?
oh, target!
you magnificent garden of bath linens and barbies! what a sweet fragrance with the majestic whoosh of your doors! how your rivers of gift wrap flow beside that most holy of holies, the starbucks near the far entrance! mom will forget where she parked.
bless you, target! for such a beautiful place to see snot-nosed toddlers in the bike aisle, or those strapping nike-shorted young lads sending snaps to their sneaky links while mom sizes up the blenders. for ben & jerry’s and shea moisture put so close to each other. mom will forget what she came for.
praise be to you, target! for you have always been the sweet offering after a fight, the reward after a grueling exam week, the stable constant between school transfers and bad grades and bad hair days and bad everything-but-hair days. mom will forget why she was angry.
glory to you, target! for there’s no fight that can’t end after pushing a cart in circles through the bedding section, no heartbreak that can go un-mended post-rifling through the holiday display at the back. you will forget, too.
oh, target! even your checkout line is heavenly, for you ensure no one leaves without the sweet taste of satisfaction and orange icebreaker mints on their tongues. let your checkout beeps sing, target, for they do good work. you will go home and eat.
thank you, target! you always have what i need.
manifesto for liberation
we stand for burning shit down and recalling
those great masses that no longer serve us
like shame, like shackles,
like all the childless gardens with the brown grass
and the brown kids and the black kids and
the weekend days in a never-ending numbness
we stand on stolen breath
we stand on train platforms and on top of parked buses
no one is leaving
this city, there will be nothing to leave
there will be small things
to hold in a heartbeat or a backpack
we stand for clean air and kicking canisters back
yelling i can’t breathe while sick of everyone else
spitting droplets of fire into the blind spots of officers
we stand for the right to stand hands up
we stand for life and pounding fists
we stand our holy ground and we’ll be damned
if the grass dies under our feet
we live in the dawn—
we teach life, sir.
no more mourning.
freedom of speech is no longer
the freedom to say nothing at all
we stand for everything and we
do not fall
we don’t have to time to fall
we’re busy, we’re ablaze,
we’re hellish good and amazing
we stand for us all, long shadows and bloody knuckles
let us spill sun rays onto our new page
we stand for paper shredded high rise rage
we stand for the new age
we stand and
do not fall.