this was/ the first time i recognized myself in months. 

at the lakeshore trader joe's they were playing the x files theme song

ARAB AMERICAN scowls. bares teeth. bares
ARAB TEETH.

ARAB AMERICAN STUDIES

 i am not/ afraid to know what’s out there. everything that wants/ to kill you is carbon & alive. already here.

TWO POEMS: yeah that's a bleeping dead alien body if i ever bleeping saw one & syzygy

i fact check this & only some of it is true. i will not say which parts. i prefer it this way.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE DATE PALM

i'm a pessimist at heart but an optimist in writing.

portrait of winter as one long sunshower

some1 said our men are killers but they are ours
yes,


could be our killers.

twitter DMs from scheherazad

look, i wanted
to say, how the boy charms the snake & is not swallowed.
the kindness of it. i too could charm the color blue into
mutual submission. the kindness being that no man
could devour us then.

TWO POEMS: kindness & odyssey 

what if we went wild
under somebody else’s
moonlight.

TWO POEMS: cowboy country & zuihitsu for the friends who write me into their oceans

watch        we said        how each of us becomes 
more precious in death               and even more deadly.

TWO POEMS: high water & WITNESS

(it’s ok i’m dying to credit;
dying to cradle a tongue)

i am no longer interested in writing poetry i am only here to dance

pause [
           ]. from now on i’ll speak

only when summoned.

the zamalek house

i ask once, where  are  you
when you are home?

fairuz in america

my baby-face plastered under a headline reading
no iraq war. my parents paint my face full of
butterflies. my parents remind me that butterflies
are free to fly and so are all the world’s children.

our great-grandfather must have been jesus, resurrected just to die again 
the mother , the son : the three holy brothers in prison for money laundering

hazard lights ; wildfire

My father shows love by sending thousand page books in the mail that I will never find time to read and which honestly might be heavy enough to break my blue bookshelf in two

SNAP! Love is Heavy

heavy heavy heavy and full.

samia saliba

Selected work