Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People Are Dying

Colonizers write about flowers.

I tell you about children throwing rocks at Israeli tanks 

seconds before becoming daisies.
I want to be like those poets

who care about the moon. 

Palestinians don't see the moon 

from jail cells and prisons.
It's so beautiful, the moon.
They're so beautiful, the flowers.

I pick flowers for my dead father when I'm sad.
He watches Al Jazeera all day.
I wish Jessica would stop texting me Happy Ramadan.
I know I'm American because when I walk into a room something dies.

Metaphors about death are for poets who think ghosts care about sound.
When I die, I promise to haunt you forever.
One day, I'll write about the flowers like we own them.

--- Noor Hindi