Naturalized by Hala Alyan
Naturalized
Hala AlyanCan I pull the land from me like a cork?
I leak all over brunch. My father never learned to swim.
I’ve already said too much.
Look, the marigolds are coming in. Look, the cuties
are watching Vice again. Gloss and soundbites.
They like to understand. They like to play devil’s advocate.
My father plays soccer. It’s so hot in Gaza.
No place for a child’s braid. Under
that hospital elevator. When this is over.
When this is over there is no over but quiet.
Coworkers will congratulate me on the ceasefire
and I will stretch my teeth into a country.
As though I don’t take Al Jazeera to the bath.
As though I don’t pray in broken Arabic.
It’s okay. They like me. They like me in a museum.
They like me when I spit my father from my mouth.
There’s a whistle. There’s a missile fist-bumping the earth.
I draw a Pantene map on the shower curtain.
I break a Klonopin with my teeth and swim.
The newspaper says truce and C-Mart
is selling pomegranate seeds again. Dumb metaphor.
I’ve ruined the dinner party. I was given a life. Is it frivolous?
Sundays are tarot days. Tuesdays are for tacos.
There’s a leak in the bathroom and I get it fixed
in thirty minutes flat. All that spare water.
All those numbers on the side of the screen.
Here’s your math. Here’s your hot take.
That number isn’t a number.
That number is a first word, a nickname, a birthday song in June.
I shouldn’t have to tell you that. Here’s your testimony,
here’s your beach vacation. Imagine:
I stop running when I’m tired. Imagine:
There’s still the month of June. Tell me,
what op-ed will grant the dead their dying?
What editor? What red-line? What pocket?
What earth. What shake. What silence.
MARGINALIA
1.
How many times have I edited myself at many a dinner table, mid-sentence, afraid my grief might ruin the mood. My pain. My rage. The effort it takes to sound like I have myself together while carrying a collapsing world inside my body is almost a kind of choreography.
2.
How often do I question whether I’m allowed to want anything more. How am I allowed to want anything, even. I see images of rubble, headlines about ceasefires that aren’t really peace, and I am still here, drinking my morning coffee.
3.
I am praying in two languages. I don’t know if God listens, but how could he not be? I am failing to keep track of all the names of children.
KEEP READING
SHARED WITH GRATITUDE
This poem appeared in Jewish Currents, October 2023.
DESCRIPTION
“As an award-winning magazine of politics, culture, and ideas, Jewish Currents publishes quarterly in print and daily online. We have received acclaim for our in-depth reporting, trenchant analysis, and rigorous cultural criticism, and for our attention to literary quality and style.” (Source)
ABOUT HALA ALYAN
Hala Alyan is the author of the novels Salt Houses—winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award, and a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize—and The Arsonists’ City, a finalist for the Aspen Words Literary Prize. She is also the author of five highly acclaimed collections of poetry, including The Twenty-Ninth Year and The Moon That Turns You Back. Her debut memoir, I’ll Tell You When I’m Home, was recently published by Simon & Schuster. She… (more)
Read more poems by Hala Alyan • Find books by this poet on Amazon • Bookshop • Follow on Instagram • Website • Or view my library
ENDNOTES
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