“WAAN LUMAY”
look here, buddy
I cme to writ an essay
sum about Islamophobia
bout how being a
Black writer is
blah blah blah
but, see here, bud
wrds are failing me &
the absence of letters
is in fact
the presence
of meaning
as a matter of fact,
my point being that
anything other than what I came
to say today is a waist of both our thighs
what I’m trying 2 say
is something
I cnt quite recall
For lack of proper recall
Thoughts take flight like birdcalls
I cme to write something urgent
Important
But the words just aren’t coming
I call it poetry but
The lines are too well-worn
Marka hadaan af soomaali kuugu badalo
Gabay ma noqon karaa?
Aniga poem ma noqon karaa?
Waxaan ka wado
Hadaad fahmi kartid
Let me hear you say aahey
Holler-garey
Sidaan uwado
Bahashaan wax qorqorka
Waxaan rajaynaa
Inaan meel kugaaro
Where that meel is
Only Allah knows
In the meantime,
We write these prose
Not love these prose
Not chase these prose
Just replace these prose
Bro can you hear me Bro
My living room smells apple cider vinegar old
(break/end)
“LUUQAD”
“Standard language ideology is the belief that there is one set of dominant language rules that stem from a single dominant discourse (like standard English) that all writers and speakers of English must conform to in order to communicate effectively.”
Chapter Title: SHOULD WRITERS USE THEY OWN ENGLISH?
Chapter Author(s): Vershawn Ashanti Young
Egalitarian municipalities got us limping toward probable eventualities.
Me & my friends avoid eye contact
Stay – low to the earth. It’s
Crazy – whatever was in the past
Doesn’t stay there unless we
Will it forth – ruminate
On Rumi – and my friends
Some of them still duck
Probation, hiding from those
Very same egalitarian municipalities
Whispering on a breath – the
Thought of freedom sneaks
Into the backs of our hands
Sometimes my friends & I
Don’t know what to make
Of being black on both
Sides. Get money is the
Roll call, role model, Rome
Falls. My friends, some of them
Stand in tiny patches of grass, shirts
Off, ruby football in hand, surrounded
By satellite dishes, garbage dumbsters,
Younger siblings run post patterns in
Front of apartment complexes {Section (MC).Eiht}
Making flowers out of fury
in Illinois where four of our last eight Governors have gone to federal prison for public corruption,
“That’s all that we need. We need a country founded for white people with a nuclear deterrent. And you watch how the world trembles,” Gebert, speaking as “Coach Finstock,” reportedly said on a white nationalist podcast in May 2018.
Matthew Gebert is a (former?) US State Department foreign affairs officer outed as a white nationalist by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Said Shaiye is a Somali writer who calls Minneapolis home. He is an MFA Candidate and Graduate Instructor at the University of Minnesota. He uses writing to heal from childhood trauma and help others do the same. He has had work published or is forthcoming in Diagram, Rigorous, Dreginald, New South, and the Muslim Writers at Home Anthology.