DIASPORA PRAYER OF THE REFUGEE'S GRANDCHILD

ANNA TALHAMI

First published in the print Literary and Art Journal, Life as Ceremony, Vol 7: Identities and Intersections.
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DIASPORA PRAYER OF THE REFUGEE’S GRANDCHILD

Anna Talhami

I know how to wrap my hair in a scarf, black and abloom

with fuchsias and call myself my own grandmother.

I know there are a thousand names for God

bound around tongues

and a thousand ways to say my name

in all the languages I have longed for,

from the places I have tried to call home.

I know I am a guest unsought in a stolen

guest house and the refugee

who lives on in my blood took shelter built

from an occupier’s dream of home. I know

this is not a prayer to be spoken lightly.

I know my frame remains a visitor, provisional

and the God alive in my body took shelter built

from an ad exec’s imagination of a woman

and this Limitless is demolishing

and rebuilding her. I know when the Sacred

asks her to leave she will have to listen. I know

when the Sacred asks her to leave she will have to listen.

I know I am already an ancestor and it’s time

to act accordingly. Somewhere, the future

is remembering me.

Still from the poetry-art film.