TERRORIST.

Dark skin Iraq Iran Afghanistan

terrorist

doesn’t shave skunk back prayer rug

terrorist

black widow masked like a bandit it inspires fear when we cannot see your mouths. We

would rather see the words you chew into cubes and spit out, so rough, in your old

eggshell tongue, than listen to them

and know they’re human. So we can pretend our lullabies are more human than you.

terrorist.

drone strikes. Hey bin Laden is that your dad up there allahu akbar

is the slogan of a monster, not a Muslim

terrorist.

You mean the same way “Hail Mary” is the motto of the crusaders, the native-murderers, the first nation-slaughterers,

terrorist? Did you forget how Jews, Hindus, atheists, Malaysians, Britons, and Austrians have also committed atrocities? You want to flag “Middle Eastern” with “monster”, “Arabic” with “animal”, “Muslim” with “massacre”, well, then all Germans are Nazis, all Christians are Crusaders, this is not about other religions. This

is not about religion. This is about breaking your prejudices over my knee.

First question: Ever heard of double standards?

Twin Towers 9/11 airplanes and a hard-boiled world trade center

terrorist.

Look: world trade center: also Mecca. Also the birth of your number system. The forefathers of jihad

terrorists

also the forefathers of your math homework. A Muslim came up with algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, arithmetic, mathematical induction,

terrorists

are responsible for your soap bars so you can clean the filth of your ignorance off your skin at night and sleep purified, are responsible for the soap bars your mother didn’t wash out the insides of your mouths with often enough,

terrorists

fashioned the stained-glass windows in cathedrals while people make love to blindness and make hate to everything else,

terrorists

designed the scientific method that cloned Dolly, that decoded the human genome, that created me in a laboratory terrorists

discovered the coffee you drink too much of,

terrorists you wanna talk about a world trade center,

let’s talk Mecca. Let’s talk the Abbasid Caliphate. Let’s talk the Tigris River in 762. Let’s talk

homeland, not a desolate wastefield that your soldiers get shipped off to, let’s talk about

how hell is the living room of some people, let’s talk about a world where the sign of the cross is terror propaganda and “Hail Mary” is the warsong of a mass murderer, let’s talk double standards. Let’s talk

did you ever think it would be right for the entire white race to be punished for the KKK,

for slavery, for lynching, for Hiroshima.

Let’s talk how you watched Aladdin when you were 7, how if your preconceptions about Muslims as murderers are right then Disney published terrorist propaganda written by a beast, let’s talk “One Thousand and One Nights,”

Let’s talk three-masted merchant vessels in the Mediterranean. Let’s talk hydropower, cryptography, astrolabes, axial precession, crankshafts, The Canon of Medicine and The Book of Healing, the scientific connection between measles and smallpox,

Ibn al-Haytham the first scientist, let’s talk your terrorists. Let’s talk about your irrational fear of women who cover up and men who won’t shave for you. Let’s talk about

how you don’t even know how to pronounce the word Arabic. Let’s talk poppy fields flaring like red stars, Egypt’s chalk formations, limestone hills, the red-sapped dragon’s blood trees, Mt. Ararat, Mt. Sinai like sunstones firing, waterfall spray dribbling over stones older than your preconceived intolerance and colored a gray your language has no word for,

more beautiful than the spit you choked out at the local mosque on your way to privilege. On your way to privileges you have only because your people weren’t stigmatized for its monsters’ sins.

Let’s talk about how not all Germans are Nazis.

Let’s talk. Let’s talk beauty you can’t comprehend, so you flag it fear and punch at its throat.

Let’s talk your insufficiency and the entire cultures you scribble in your margins.

Let’s talk the way my mother whispers to my father about the conspiracy “the Muslims” have to overrun America. Let’s talk about

non-Muslim girls using the hijab as a fashion statement instead of an unashamed testimony. Let’s

talk about how you spit at them. Call them names. Skewer them with slanting

looks until they’re afraid to walk outside. Until they’re terrified in their own skin.

Until you’ve sufficiently terrified them. Let’s talk terror. Let’s talk the two boys I saw in the dollar store with Nikes and sagging jeans, radiating white American boyness.

Let’s talk how this prose is long

and still not long enough to suffice. Let’s talk. Let’s talk terrorists.