My father worries I’ll be captured
on photo1 or video and remembered fondly2
by a state3 or drones or the collection of generals and agents4
who can and who may one day seek to snatch me5
from the honeycomb of my home hidden in the open air6.
My father is dead now but still worrying
thin the sore spot through which some unmarked car will pass7.
I am assured if i go back to his home
I won’t last a week8, if I even get past the border9.
My father is not wrong10. doing battle11
with nation states takes a toll12.
too many die too young13, grinding
until they are ground down, battering
ram busting a structure until backbone cracks,
until the heart bails on the body at 4514, or 47, or 4115.
Too many folks16 claiming the street
were peeled from the fruit of movement, they were taken17, yes,
and it’s hard not to assume they were murdered18
and it is hard to accept their murders19
and it is bile in my throat to sing this song.
and all the reasons he tells me not to20 are the reasons I do21
All the reasons he gives me not to are the reasons I do.22
_________________
1 Leila Khaled
2 Assata Shakur
3 Ahed Tamimi
4 [redacted] Sri Lankan journalist & Shireen Abu Akleh
5 Stephanie Weiner, Joseph Iosbaker, Hatem Abudayyeh, Mick Kelly, Jess Sundin
6 Pat Parker
7 Aurielle Marie
8 Rasmea Odeh
9 Randa Jarrar
10 Fred Hampton & Refaat Al Areer
11 Ida B. Wells
12 Fannie Lou Hamer
13 Erica Garner, Eric’s fierce daughter
14 Michael Ratner, CCR director
15 Elandria Williams
16 PISAB activists and other southerners who died in the years after Hurricane Katrina
17 Ferguson activists found dead since 2014 verdict: Deandre Joshua, Darren Seals, Marshawn McCarrel, Edward Crawford Jr, Danye Jones, Basem Masri
18 Marsha P. Johnson
19 estimated over 1 million dead during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, in the US alone
20 ‘Auni, my father’s cousin, all our cousins and brothers
21 June Jordan, Audre Lorde
22 Sylvia & Malcolm, Noel & Amil, Henry & Marianne, Julian & Persephone & Anson, Ripley, Amani & Asha, Porter, Charlie & AJ, Julian & Oliver, Kai, SaBrina’s babies, and all the children I will love, not yet born
Rasha Abdulhadi is a queer Palestinian Southerner disabled by Long Covid. A poet, essayist, speculative fiction writer and editor, and fiber artist, Rasha holds fellowships from The Lillian E. Smith Center, Wherewithal Foundation, Sundress Academy for the Arts, the DC Commission on Arts and Humanities, and the Maryland State Arts Council. Their writing has appeared in five countries on three continents, including in The Offing, Smoke and Mold, Kweli, Poem-a-Day, Electric Lit, carte blanche, Shade Journal, Mizna, Room, FIYAH, and Strange Horizons. Rasha’s work is anthologized in Thyme Travellers (forthcoming 2024), Mid/South Sonnets, Essential Voices: A COVID-19 Anthology, Escape Tunnels, Snaring New Suns, Unfettered Hexes, Halal if You Hear Me, and Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia Butler. They are the winner of the SFPA’s 2023 Dwarf Star award and the author of the Elgin award-nominated chapbook who is owed springtime.
