for oceti sakowin

It was prayer, song, gathering morning
horses nuzzling each breaklight day.
Bullet rubber in my cheek, I pretended water,
tasted, relief.

No, I am not broken
though numbers blight my forearm
show in slatted light, through dog crate
bars. Indelible insinuating count, not coup,
bait, governor’s hate washed over.
Just like lake when you first drowned,
and even now nothing stills the rise and fall
of our collective careful breath. All of this
because nothing slakes thirst when water
floats fully bloated blacksnakes each tap draw.
If they kill us now

everyone who ever died to give us life,
this string beaded red / white, ends
with no beginning.

                                  No, we are rising, rise
each offense, every greed wrung motion.

                                                                     We
dreamed this dream back when.                  We
are those before us.           Their blood our own.
Our home.          It was prayer, song, gathering.

 

 

a simple equation
even a mathematician could get behind
mathematics at its simplest form

right now I should be at camp of the sacred stones in north dakota
honoring the resistance/protection of the standing rock dakota tribe against the dakota access pipeline

last year the gold king mine spill sent over 3,000,000 gallons of toxic wastewater down the
animas river in the four corners region of the united states
and you probably didn’t even hear about it

3,000,000 gallons of cadium, lead, arsenic, beryllium, zinc, iron, and copper.

if approved, it is estimated that the dakota access oil pipeline would carry over 500,000 barrels
of crude oil everyday from the bakken fields in north dakota to illinois
crossing the missouri river
which carries with it the threat of pollution and endangering the environment of sacred ancestral
indigenous land

google: moskva river fire after oil spill 2015
google: cuyahoga river fire 1969
google: wounded knee 1973
google: churchrock uranium mill spill 1979
google: david standard american holocaust death toll

over one hundred million indigenous people killed
allow me help you imagine that number:
imagine every person who has ever owned a tina turner
or adele or britney spears or david bowie album: dead / annihilated
because of colonial dumbfuckery european curiosity

I should be at standing rock
with the thousands of other indigenous activists
with the other indigenous tribes standing in solidarity against a white snake with black blood
trying to fuck shit up like a science-fiction horror story
except this time the indigenous people aren’t stereotyped as cannibal savages threatening white
tourists looking for a little bit of culture looking for something to discover looking for something
new to eat consume colonize repeat eat consume colonize
repeat: colonial dumbfuckery european curiosity
the other nite
I walked to the nearby 7-11 and came across two Indigenous folks while standing in line
I noticed a sister with a streak of pink hair wearing beaded earrings
so I asked them what tribe they are from
which is something I rarely ever feel confident doing
but which is also something I’ve seen my parents do countless times
her friend answers
he’s a handsome Indigenous guy wearing blue jeans and a white button-up dress shirt

“Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota. Northwest part of the state. What about
you?”

“Diné”

“Oh, Dene from Canada?”

“No. Diné. Navajo. From the southwest, Navajo Nation.”

“But did you know there are also Navajos up in Canada, too? It’s crazy.”

“Yeah, well, we were all freely migrating up and down back in the day. Have you been out to
Standing Rock, yet?”

“No. My co-workers went this weekend and we’re in town for a wedding, but I haven’t been yet.”

“I really wanna go but I’m headed back to New Mexico for a few weeks.”

“You should go. I wanna go for the medicine and the songs.”

 

upon leaving he hands me his business card / says we should keep in touch
I rarely run into other Indigenous people in my neighborhood so I take this as an affirmation:

WATER IS MEDICINE
A CONTINUAL CEREMONY
IT BRINGS PEOPLE TOGETHER

colonizers can’t seem to grasp this reality
indigenous resistance isn’t protest or disruption or civil unrest
indigenous resistance is ceremony

and maybe that’s what terrifies them

our medicine isn’t based around capitalism or death politics
our medicine isn’t based on social hierarchies of oppression

our medicine doesn’t enslave the earth or attempt to conquer the land through extraction forced
penetration exploitation genocidal decimation to the landscape animals and people
basic colonial violence

I should be at standing rock instead of listening to laura nyro under a river tree and drinking
coconut water in the columbia river gorge
on a beach that would not exist unless the earth was exploded to construct a series of man-made
dams along this river’s natural course
that would not exist unless sacred indigenous lands and cultural artifacts were drowned or
displaced entire populations relocated removed by force by gunpoint by threat of death

now this site is a nude beach primarily populated by cis-male white queers
a couple months ago someone complained on facebook about the amount of heterosexuals who
were taking over the beach / the prime real estate / fallacious queer utopic destination: “Do you
remember when Rooster Rock was a gay beach?”
I chimed in “Remember when Rooster Rock was Indigenous Land?”
someone said “This comment should have ended the discussion.”
but you know how white progressives are
they keep going
and going
and going

but before I allow the frustration to consume me
I have to remind myself that everyone has a right to their opinion
and we live in a time of corruptive culture
desperate for attention
desperate to leave our mark somewhere
desperate to give away any soul we have left
for a momentary glimpse of validation

#demiandineyazhi
#indigenousqueer
#desperatelyseekingwhatever
#iwouldhaveratherbeenalesbianinthe70sthanperpetuatethewhitequeerboyfantasy

sometimes when I’m walking down the trails out here at ol’ cock rock
I swear I see shadows or movements in the trees when no one is clearly around
I imagine it’s the indigenous and queer ancestors who are protecting this land
and they lean in close to whisper in my ear:
don’t you know that writing about queer sex isn’t revolutionary anymore?

so then I walk down by the water and watch as thousands of suns blind me
watch as thousands of tiny suns create a vision of eternity
reflecting off the rippling of water
I walk out until the river gets deep enough for me to submerge my entire body
then I dunk under and come out drenched in life
the waves reflect vibrant strands of luminous transformative light against my legs thighs knees
submerged in water my dick moving slightly with the current
the mighty columbia running toward the pacific ocean
toward the future scene of a setting sun
and then I remember standing rock
the resistance / the medicine / the language
and I feel momentarily transplanted / for a second
a split second that lasts until I’ve cleansed myself with handfuls of water atop my head
intermittently watching the light of the river against my arms and hands outstretched

a visual ceremony for standing rock
for the animas river
for the mighty columbia
for all the water and life on earth battling colonial capitalist corporate greed

and I recall a text I sent joshua
after the orlando shooting
after the alton sterling shooting
after the video of philando castile being shot dead:

when there’s no one left to trust
destroy white supremacy
until there’s nothing left but love
destroy white supremacy
until we are able to choose how we
wish to survive
destroy white supremacy
until there is nothing left to love
destroy white supremacy
until it is ground down to dust
destroy white supremacy
destroy white supremacy
destroy white supremacy
destroy white supremacy
destroy white supremacy

and then I take a picture of the columbia river gorge looking out toward the direction of standing
rock and send it to him
as I leave the river I create a mantra for myself:

you should erect a monument in a public site that honors this sacred fight
you should erect a monument in a public site that honors this sacred fight
you should erect a monument in a public site that honors this sacred fight
you should erect a monument in a public site that honors this sacred fight

and with all this positive energy / ancestral memory / and sacred medicine

I think we all just might

I. Textbook Fragments

[DNA TEST: IF YOU DRAW BLOOD / FROM A PALESTINIAN, BOIL / ITS SUBSTANCE UNTIL / IT IS A TREMBLING WHITE¹ / BODY OF UNZIPPING / HELIX & DANCING VINE / PRACTICALLY AN ERASURE / OF ITSELF, THERE IS A ONE-IN-THREE CHANCE / THIS BODY SHARES / A CHROMOSOME WITH THE OPPRESSOR.²]

[FOOTNOTE: DO NOT CALL THIS WAR / GENOCIDE BUT INSTEAD, ETHNIC CLEANSING / PALESTINIANS NEED NOT LOOK AT / THE RACIALIZATION / OF IT ALL. THIS ENCOURAGES THE OPPRESSOR’S / POWER COMPLEX. MOST PEOPLE / IN THE MIDDLE EAST ARE WHITE / ANYWAYS³ WHAT IS NARRATIVE IF NOT THE BLOOD / IT CARRIES? WHAT ARE YOU IF NOT THE TRAUMA YOU INHERIT?⁴ ]

[ ISN’T THIS BIOLOGY THE MOST OPPRESSIVE THING YOUR MOTHER GIFTED YOU ]

---

¹ Whereas, the oppressor implants their DESIGN
into every h(a)unted bloodline –
this country: everyone’s
inheritance.

² By which you mean, the oppressor
runs through the bodies
their bullets miss?

³ By virtue of expulsion
or white phosphorus?
i.e. choose your .

⁴ Every time i open
my mouth: a chorus
of BLOOD

the oppressor calls it
DIVERSITY or NARRATIVE
hence FABLE.

i think of it as history.

II. Family History Fragments – a reverse chronology

israeli man asks me to tie him up and fuck him. says he has a POWER COMPLEX.

after taking a sex hiatus, i contract mono. why does my BIOLOGY fail me?

the first panic attack in college felt like a heart attack. ER tech says i just need sleep.

(the first time i was raped i was outside myself)

my parents are afraid college is making an ACTIVIST of me.
what happened to our george?
why don’t you come home anymore?  

i eat hummus too, we’re practically the same: SOLIDARITY.

3rd grade: you’re dirty because you’re Ay-rab.
same year – baba almost dies of a heart attack.

age 6, i ask mama why we never visit palestine. why we never come home anymore.

my parents decide not to teach me arabic growing up: DEFENSE MECHANISM. or maybe i was never their george.

teta dies of cancer before i am old enough to understand. grape leaves blossom in her garden, little hands reaching for some invisible heaven. why does our BIOLOGY fail us?

baba takes over shop at age 20 after sido dies of a heart attack. his mother, widowed in this country where no one speaks her language.

sido is forced out of his home at age 20. hence, mama is born in america. hence i am american.

settlement camps surround Ramallah, make an eviction notice of teta’s house: cell MIGRATION. fatal OVERGROWTH.

auntie used to say the settlers took, first, the hilltops & aquifers. uprooted the olive trees & waged BIOLOGICAL WARFARE against our lineage: reclamation. of INHERITANCE.

(or was it GENOCIDE?)

when the colonizers emptied the villages, they lined up the men to be executed in front of their families, raped the women & planted pine trees over the wreckage. they were miles away from my teta’s town. just far enough so no one could hear the screams.

even when the land was ours
it wasn’t.

(this is how i feel about my body sometimes)

[redacted]

III. self-portrait as Palestinian Village, post-Nakba

what the textbooks fail to mention:
i was whole once. this flesh
wasn’t always the site of a bloodied
ecosystem; these rose-soaked
kuffiyat – a thousand dancing ghosts.

i was not always crumbled
fortress & concrete
partition. once, the bodies
in me could sing
without screaming

i have never known
this

trees singing  different nation’s
wind-song; roots grasping buried
kin like only a mother could; even
when the colonizers plant life
in me, they make amnesia
of my childrens’ laughter assimilating
into wind & call my hollow,
false witness. the question
marks in your history books?
i am an erasure

of myself; my biology
fails me – i mean to say,
once i had a body
to choke on.

IV. ███████████████████████ [ ZIONIST NOTES & REVISIONS ]

israeli man asks me to tie him up and fuck him. says he has GIVES HIMSELF TO PALESTINIAN WITH a POWER COMPLEX.

after taking a sex hiatus, i contract mono. why does my BIOLOGY fail me?

the first panic attack in college felt like a heart attack. ER tech says i just need sleep.
[ YOUR BODY IS IRRELEVANT IN ALL POLITICAL SCENARIOS ]

█████████████████████████████

my parents are afraid college is making an ACTIVIST of me.
what happened to our george? [ WITNESS THE PARENTS RECOIL AT THE BEAST THEY SPAWNED ]
██████████████████████████████████████████

i eat hummus too, we’re practically the same: SOLIDARITY. CHILDREN APPRECIATE ISRAELI CULTURE – A PEACE OFFERING, OF SORTS.

████████you██ dirty ██████ you██ Ay-rab.
same year – baba almost dies of a heart attack.
[ YOU SAID IT. WHY DO PALESTINIANS ALWAYS TEACH HATRED? EVEN AMONG THEIR OWN. ]

█████████████████ never ███ palestine. ███████████████████████[ IT WAS NEVER YOUR HOME TO BEGIN WITH ]

my parents █████████ teach me ██████████████████████████████ maybe i was never their george.

teta dies ████████████████ old enough to understand█████████████████████████████aching ██████ invisible heaven. █████████████████████████████

baba takes over. ██████████████

sido █████ a ███████████████████████████ country where no one speaks ████████████.

sido is forced out of his home at age 20. hence, mama is born in america. hence i am american.
[ WHAT DO YOU KNOW OF BEING STATELESS? WE HAVE 2 MILLENIA ON YOUR LINEAGE; HE WAS SETTLER IN OUR HOME.]

settlement camps surround REVIVE Ramallah, make an eviction notice of teta’s house:
cell MIGRATION. fatal OVERGROWTH. [ YOU ALWAYS KNEW US TO BE CANCEROUS. YOUR BLOOD LIBELS & TALK OF LIBERTY CLOG THIS LAND LIKE ARTERIES.]

auntie used to say the settlers took, first, the hilltops & aquifers. uprooted the olive trees & waged BIOLOGICAL WARFARE against our lineage: reclamation. of INHERITANCE.
[ THE SETTLERS FLEE RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION, MUCH LIKE PILGRIM SETTLERS FLED FOR AMERICA. YOU DARE PAINT US COLONIZER FOR RECLAIMING OUR PROMISED LAND? ]

(or was it GENOCIDE?)
[ BY VIRTUE OF EXISTING ON THE LAND BENEATH YOUR FEET, YOU ARE A GENOCIDE.]

when the colonizers emptied the villages, they lined up the men to be executed in front of their families, raped the women & planted pine trees over the wreckage. they were miles away from my teta’s town. just far enough so no one could hear the screams. [ AHISTORICAL ANALYSIS ]

███████ the land ██████
█ wasn’t.

(this is how i feel about my body sometimes) [ YOU CAN’T SAY YOU WEREN’T ASKING FOR ANY OF THIS ]

V. News Report Fragments

“No one should tell me that an olive tree is more important than a human life.”
Colonel Eitan Abrahams
Israeli Defence Force Commander

they shot another █████
under an OLIVE TREE today. he was
unarmed. autistic –
my cousin’s reckless
limbs –  the village children
emptied of smiles. like his
brother – an israeli
prisoner.  TREMBLING BODY. said
a terrorist’s CHROMOSOMES pass
through an OLIVE TREE like him
& he was outside
himself. tantrum all
flying leaves, his sole
weapons.    until –

& snap.
& still.

& air
thickens the way
skin retreats
from exit wound

for what seems like centuries.
another OLIVE TREE absorbing
aftershock. & DANCING VINE
whip. oil splattering
the pavement. earth drunk
off his gold SUBSTANCE.
grape leaves partition
the turbulent wind
he leaves behind –

mother – a weeping
willow – wondering
what else this land
will take from her