Andy Young
when you hear them talk here of Muslims, of Arabs
and you my daughter think yourself
American or half-American half your father
and think of last time you were “over there”
decidedly foreign hot hungry stubborn
on the verge of sick
the talking you didn’t understand
a door away
sound of muffled water bubbling
someone banging on a rusty metal can
remember how no one was ever on a schedule
as you were lead from tea to tea
your visit the most important thing
how the pigeons and ducks squawked from boxes
carried on people’s heads through the streets
then down dimlit stairs leading to the train
the market mounds of coriander
and ginger poured from bins
hibiscus blooms frankincense
dom from that ancient tree
think of the sugar doll saved for you
in the one dark room
sealed off until your return
or how you’d lie there on the mat looking at the paint
delicate as frosting at the room’s edges
where ceiling met wall
your cousin who calls you sister
learned to paint like that
thinking how your eyes would touch it
remember the girls circling you
how Mariam taught herself English in part to talk to you
how she would ask do you love it
of something she wore and if you did—what could you say
but yes?—she would hold it out
to you and say it is yours
“This poem comes from my experience as a white North American woman married to an Egyptian man raising mixed children in a racist society.” —Andy Young
Andy Young’s second full-length collection, Museum of the Soon to Depart, was published in October by Carnegie Mellon University Press. She is also the author of All Night It Is Morning (Diálogos Press, 2014) and four chapbooks. She grew up in southern West Virginia and has lived most of her adult life in New Orleans, where she teaches at New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. Her work has recently appeared in Greensboro Review, Drunken Boat, and Michigan Quarterly Review. A graduate of Warren Wilson’s Program for Writers, her work has been translated into several languages. Find her at andyyoung.org, or @andyyoungpoet.