Sister Sirens

To The White Men Who Fear Everything

By on • ( 25 Comments )

A powerful poem about the strength of one woman when confronted about her heritage by those who are fearful and stereotype what they don’t understand. May we all write with such strength and bravery.

Fatimah Asghar

& everyone. Including my 11 year old frame

a circle of empty surrounding me & my violin

 

on the crowded bus the weeks after the towers

fell & then you blamed my skin. It was your feet

 

& broken glass that followed me around the field

when I showed up too early for soccer practice,

 

you who reminded me no sidewalk or park

would ever be mine. Anything coming from

 

a country ending in –stan steamed terror, towelhead,

exotic words I’d never heard, but now all my name but not

 

now all my resume but not. I know I must scare you,

white men, me with my heavy lidded eyes, loud

 

laugh & insistence on being here & heard.

Me, with my brown & fly until I die, me with my Islam

 

& tattoos & my uncle who changed his restaurant

to Afghani…

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Categories: Sister Sirens

25 replies »

  12. This was beautiful.There is something almost trance-like about poetry. I can almost see the tattoos and here the loud laughter.

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  25. I know it is sad that we live in a day and age where we still see skin color instead of the same species of the human race. what you feel is the same feeling that I (a white male) get from working around majority of Arab men in a Mediterranean restaurant. I am not the one ordering the bombings and raids on the middle east. I am not prejudiced against anyone who is human, because of his/her nationality or skin color. I am however trying to get others to see that we were all created by a creator who never intended for us to hate like we do.

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