Work Search Requirements
My dad hated work before hating work was cool. His first job in the United States was as a clerk at the San Jose Department of Motor Vehicles on Alma Street. It was 1975 and the position paid $6 an hour. When he became a driver’s license examiner, he earned a few pennies more. Though he was hired for his Vietnamese, he couldn’t keep up with needing to speak English to the DMV’s majority white clientele. Meanwhile, the Vietnamese test takers couldn’t drive. Still, they insisted he pass them anyway, citing compatriotism over common sense and safety.
Life Cycles
My mother says we’re strapped to a cosmic wheel, and you can’t just press a start button and expect to escape suffering. But Ama takes me on Sundays, and we run through the aisles laughing, flinging open the doors to every machine, witnessing rebirth: a crow gushing out like ink, a doe climbing out on wobbly legs, an octopus blended into jelly.
I try saying a prayer for a NICU baby
I hear her saying the Lord’s prayer to them while they squirm and bat away the sticky readers on their little bodies. she is gentle. she has the patience only a mother could have. no matter how many times her children have kicked at her stomach and cried she has always come back to nurture them. she smiles at them and says, “Amen.”
Volcanic Vigils
My father went whole and alone before / I carried the parts of my mother
Queer Visions: Capturing Life and Identity in Palestine
I don’t seek safety from police or other state authorities as a queer Palestinian man. Instead, I negotiate my existence in my own community and society. I am an expert on my people, I come from them, and that, no one can underestimate.
Good Mourning Palestine
Gooood Mourning Pa-les-tiiiiiiiiiine! Hey, this is not a test, this is rocks and stones. Time to rock it from Masaffer Yata to Jerusalem. Is that me or does that sound like a Mahmoud Darwish poem?