POEM "MY PRESIDENT ASKS ME ABOUT REDEMPTION" BY YEMENI AMERICAN POET THREA ALMONTASER

a found poem: Khalil Jubran's The Prophet

Then a president said, Speak to us of Redemption.

And the poet answered saying:

Absolve by mopping your bitter poison off the streets. Watch it flow purple out our living rooms.

For to be redeemed is to girdle the people's agony.

And to not fasten it around your America, now empty and dark.

You told yourself, Hell is nothing more than an opening, so you slept peacefully.

And always you have been told that redemption is the dust on the path to power.

But I say to you, suck the thickened venom from your wound.

Spit it on a Muslim's prayer rug, where it turns into a goat tasked with ramming horn-first into your noggin, tackling your demons.

For redemption exists in healing yourself. Thus, your people.

Let me be clear.

You plucked us like lizards out a crevice for dinner.

Left a man begging by the saguaro, eating sand, crying, I'm hungry, I'm hungry.

Where are his children who learned to never call the cops or they'll point the wrong finger?

Who watch the moon's tilting across the border?

The poor may speak to you of emptiness, but he cannot give you his hunger.

The refugee may speak to you of leaving, but he cannot give you his drowned.

Which of us would be another murmur on this block? Another dimmed gangsta faced with death?

And I say, redemption is a golden glade above your head.

In its light, you see the people for what they could have been—a friend, a cousin, a warm greeting through peaceful streets that said,

Brother, join me for a minute on the stony porch with the old tabby, a tray of tea.

Call redemption a shape-up for the soul. Call it by your barber's name. Call it by your neighbor's.

Often seen you at the park, poking at the ladies, pleased by their quivering.

Often heard you say, as if speaking in sleep, Make America great.

I say, not in sleep, but in the over-wakefulness of noontide—here is the horse and here is the arena.

We are still here, we will always be here, we, the dirt under the nails of your country, crusted red from digging.

God rests in the distant fields, waiting.

SOURCE: The Wild Fox of Yemen: Poems by Threa Almontaser, Graywolf Press, Minnesota, USA, 2021.