poems
articles and stories
    In these moments of social exchange, the illusion of similarity between me and the girls in my class floated
    away, bubble light. Despite sharing the same school uniform, being in the Brownies, singing soprano in the
    choir, and being a good speller, my life and theirs were separated by the magic door. And although my
    classmates didn't know what was behind that portal, they circled me in the playground and shouted "darkie"
    at my braids trying to explode into a kinky mop, or "ape" at my arms bearing mahogany hair against my olive
    pale skin. It was dizzying and my stomach squirrel-squealed in loneliness.....(more)  just off main street

I
    IT'S THE CRYING women who get to me. When the camera stops on the streets in Jenin, the Palestinian
    refugee camp destroyed by the Israeli Defense Forces, and a scarfed, pie-faced woman cries and yells, her
    arms flapping outward.  (more) For Arab Americans, it's pain in familiar faces
    This time, when she stretched her arm up to the cabinet over the refrigerator, this time, when she tried
    to reach the peanut butter, it was Sept 11, 2001. It was just after two jets crashed into the World Trade
    Center, about the time the towers collapsed and thousands and thousands of people died and thousands
    went missing, and the nation’s and the world’s faces knotted from fear or opened in shock or closed
    in sorrow....(more) Profiles of an Arab Daughter
    Our body has turned to parchment
    Our body has turned to parchment
    Our body is the scrolls
    upon which this history will be written
         Where the Body Rests...
    Wheelhouse Magazine
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