Do they miss home?

The feel of whipped winds replacing thoughts cashing in cackles forcibly stolen off their lips

Yearn to love a land which gave them life instead of painstakingly taking it projecting layers and layers of illusive mistrust

Know deception - the covert type that mutates your cells changes your history helps you forget
Blissfully forces you to remember

Inherit the careless careful gene embedded in lineage promises of forever understand this part of their sullied youth

They do.

I think
I am starting to see
perceptions
I see that I do love israel
eventhough
it has taught me some hard lessons
but they were lessons that I needed to see
sometimes life must break you
in order to grow you
I love how the people care about each other
in times of need
how people smile at you on the street
how old israeli grandmothers
will treat you as their own
how we treat each other as family for good or bad
how life is authentic here
and how we don't bullsht each other
life is refreshing crazy and intense here
and there are things that I hate
and that things that I can't stand
but there are also so many beautiful things here
how people love their family here
how there are so many animals here
how we live in a beautiful country
with so many beautiful beaches
towns rivers streams
nature spots
and laughter of chidren
sparkling throughout the air.
How walking down the street
I hear arabic hebrew russian and sometimes english as well.
How despite how the world portays us
we work together in peace
and especially where I live in Israel
we all live in peace
how in times of trouble we get together
to protest we don't just stand by
and allow things to go on,
how we are so strong
how we hold each other when we cry,
how we care about one another
how we yell at each other
one minute
and the next we are laughing together!
This is my home
Israel and Palestine.

every time
i speak my own
name i taste
the blood of
my mother's bit
lip (&) held tongue-- a self shed
to take rein

o' my father's flatiron
sur/name:
the blood, reigned (&)
i remain—
sanguine & ruddy
after all
(these broods).

don’t look at me like I don’t belong,
like me and my kind ain’t full welcome

We're all immigrants, no-one's born in this kingdom,
We’ve got the same grace-rights, as full-fledged citizens

We've each got eternal leave to remain
and have done since the day we came

We have full access, we're all V-I-Ps,
us and the King, we’re real family

me and mine are all around His manor,
if you don’t like it, take it to Father.

I feel like Christian Bale
in that one movie
"Am I... the American ******?"

the emic and etic personas
collapse in pantomime
like how the Donald destroyed democracy and civil rights for four years.

I feel like the average citizen
who has no choice but to vote
so that I don't get deported once again

From marble and granite to steel and glass,
we were discussing Rhina Espaillat’s On the Avenue in class,
was it 1950s or 1980s NYC and were the fifties
the city’s halcyon days or is it now, the 2020s,
the boroughs teeming with immigrants
from the round earth’s imagined corners,
Hasidim and Muslim, Haitian and Russian, as we
Italians and Irish in an earlier era were. Everything will
be ok or not, the recombinations which make
prediction and intuition fortunately hopeless
and each individual an experiment gone well or wrong.
On the avenue God speaks by spewing
toy and clothing stores, breakdancers and ice skaters,
the Brooklyn Navy Yard seen from the Brooklyn Bridge,
the skyline admired when my car broke down on the Triborough Bridge.
The numbers of us overwhelm, there exist powers
overwhelming for the human body and mind.
I don’t mind but I can’t make sense of it.
Gandhi said What you do may not seem important
but it is very important that you do it. By that what is meant?
Linda said Why does God always have to be a man?
I said He could be a she but She’s probably really
a Tyrannosaurus rex. I like to be in America!

Look on me dearly:
your stolen sullied sullen

daughter. I could dig you up
to hold your bones but

want only to wash myself
away, like white foam

from the seashore.
If I burn what is buried,

is it cremation
or disintegration? You would fly

ashes in the wind, like a wish
given

lift, like an altar of lit
incense.

Think of learning of your blood:
yellow skin and rice paddies

and great-great-great-great-granddaddy
grey for the Confederacy.

Do two halves not one whole
soul make? I take

a breath
and leave it

free.

Kathleen Avenue still has houses,
But people left, and trees were felled;
The canopy across the street
Has lost some limbs
And many feet
Of children
Playing hide and seek.

One house, a brown-shingled frame
Is aging there as are our names;
The front yard doesn't boast corn
That Daddy grew
When first we landed;
Not knowing neighbours were offended
With farming behind green picket fences.

      so corn, cabbage and turnip too
      were left to rot. Daddy knew to
      strike when hot.

The locals weren't too much impressed
When Daddy taught them some respect.
The human smell of decaying turnip
Turned noses down that stood straight up. The front was never farmed again.
    
Recently, I passed that yard,
The picket fences gone;
And someone has a garden there,
The new arrivals,
If they care,
Really see the wisdom there.
I give a nod
To my Old Man,
An immigrant
Before his time.