I hate diaspora poetry

as much as the next

fed-up immigrant

All that bullshit

about “lives stained

with honey and turmeric”

and “the colonizer

cutting my tongue with

aluminum shears”

is utterly boring

But there is truth to 

the pain that comes from

racism and xenophobia

and the distance between

the people that are supposedly

your people,

whatever the fuck that means

All I know is this:

My father came here

and he sat hunched before

a computer for hours,

doing whatever it is

a database architect does,

and trying to deflect the racism

that loomed above his cubicle

and bloomed in the sky

after 9/11--

the day after his

second child was born

My mother came here

and at first she was so lonely,

with only my soft-skulled,

baby self for company,

that she cried herself to sleep

each night for two years,

wondering how her brain,

full of silvery, delicate

Urdu couplets,

was going to learn

flat, counterintuitive

English,

and how her baby

was going to hold onto

a culture green and gold

in a land of red and blue

and always, always

white

All I know is this:

My father is here,

a citizen now,

running a business he

breathed life into,

sitting hunched over a

computer,

doing whatever it is a 

database architect does,

clocking in fifty, sixty hours

a week into the secret time clock

in my head,

and thinking

about what life will be like

when January 20th comes

and goes, and telling himself

that he has been through worse,

in Pakistan,

and in the States

My mother is here,

a citizen now,

her slip-on beige niqab

on a hook by the coat closet,

her black abaya hanging within,

her four children all in school,

all raised by her love,

her sweat, her tears,

and she holds her thinning

black braid between her fingers,

thinking of all that this country

has taken from her,

and all that is has given,

and she wonders whether

the fear she feels on every

September eleventh,

the fear that keeps her from

leaving the house at all,

will soon bloom into

a fear that stains each day,

and she wonders how

she will tell her children

to be safe

without exposing her own

fear

All I know is this:

I am a woman

made of fear and pain and loss

and Urdu couplets and steaming rice

and knockoff Burberry scarves-cum-hijabs

and Beyoncé songs on vinyl

and snickerdoodles

I am afraid,

I cling to hope,

I cling to righteous anger,

I take this silver tongue,

I take these golden words,

I write into existence

my manifesto—

This too, shall pass

In my mind, 

I lie in a field of mustard greens

on a charpoy under the stars,

and I let myself think

about every place I feel

at home

and I pray for 

those sacred grounds

to remain Hallowed

All I know is this:

My diaspora poem is

written widdershins,

in a language locked

with a key lodged deep

in my eternal being

My diaspora poem is

about fear and the future

fear of the future,

that insidious, elusive

thing

My diaspora poem is

an ode to my parents

and the rocks they

had hewn by hand

for me,

my kith,

my kin

My diaspora poem is

for the hijabis out there

that are tired of saying 

they are feminist and 

they are Muslim

to people on both sides

of that ugly

Discourse

My diaspora poem is

a love letter from me

to you, with all 

my best wishes

concentrated into

each

and

every

word