MY FATHER & I WATCH YOUTUBE AFTER THE REPORTERS HAVE FLED SYRIA

                     by Dana Alsamsam 

Underground hospitals      not enough beds
mothers ululate their children’s names      The next clip loads

pixelated image from a cell phone      By the time we parse it
we’re in too deep to stop      A rebel soldier slices

a government soldier’s chest      the torn uniform waving
like a flag      then the rebel pulls out the soldier’s heart

that bloody core      still pounding well   Allahuakbar
he says this is for Allah      begs understanding from Allah

steals the words of our prayers      spills them on war soil
Blood down his forearm      he digs his teeth into the organ

shakes his head      a wolf a terrifying decadence
hope already gone with this life      & all the others

But who is to say when the light went out      There is no one
there to count the dead      The next clip loads      I imagine

if America had not called to my father      I watch him
wonder if he could be that rebel      if he could take that heart

follow an arranged hopelessness      his family taken
for captive      his children’s bodies purpled      tossed on the street

I see him as he must see himself      a new pain so close
he becomes the dagger      & the hand that guides it

still here on this American couch      vibrating with hate
My father says      I cannot see the other side      daughter

I cannot see past this      Together we have opened
a door that we cannot walk through






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Dana Alsamsam is the author of a chapbook, (in)habit (tenderness lit, 2018), and her poems are published or forthcoming in Bone Bouquet, The Massachusetts Review, North American Review, Gigantic Sequins, Tinderbox Poetry, The Boiler Journal, Salamander, BOOTH, and others. Her work has been supported by a fellowship from Lambda Literary's Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices.