Duplex of Silence

“Keep quiet and stay safe” is not innocent advice. 
It is a call to shake from your hands the soil of the homeland for which you do not find a name.

— Mahmoud Darwish, Journal of an Ordinary Grief

duplex of silence
after Jericho Brown

their first lesson: keep quiet and stay safe
quiet taught first in your mother’s tongue,

your mother culled her tongue the hard way
safe, your way on their unloving streets

unloving streets through sparkling skyline
skyline, father’s spine they lost on shores

shores of seas that greeted your birth
this sea they will cast your body back into

should your body speak of inflicted pain
the way they cut your pained roots after–

mangrove roots gasping for air above water
seed planted in larynx overgrowing, choking 

larynx shakes in drowned syllables of
their first lesson: keep quiet and stay safe

Illustration by Myriam Louise Taleb