ANTIGONE 14

                        by Fargo Tbakhi

antigone says who cares for us but us?
the scattered dirt, our handful of everything.
dronedead. noon, sun, the stink of breath.
who cares? fools’ religion, praying for an op-ed
powerful enough to bring us home.
the barracks emptied and filled again with power.
there’s oral history, and then there’s oral history:
the residue of every meal a person ever ate, 
records kept safe in the mouth gone cold. 
while the walls shake, every ninety seconds,
we recite: rice. cumin. eggplant. lamb. 
mythology becomes our antidote to rhetoric.
a corpse is a stained glass window into living. 
i wrap my face in sorrowcloth and ride for death. 










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photo by Easton Green

Fargo Tbakhi (he/him) is a queer Palestinian-american writer and performer from Phoenix, Arizona. He is the winner of the 2018 Ghassan Kanafani Resistance Arts Scholarship, a Pushcart nominee, and a 2020 Desert Nights, Rising Stars fellow. His work is published in Cotton Xenomorph, Mizna, Cosmonauts Avenue, Glass: a Journal of Poetry, Peach Mag and elsewhere. He tweets @YouKnowFargo and probably wants to hold your hand.