No matter what
You can’t escape it:
The signifying trap
A mediating
Meditation
Tell me
A brick thru- a cop car window
Is not a poem
A prison break
Is not a novel
Nor an uprising
A tune emphatically chorused.
Border violence doesn’t hide
On the Out/side
Of the In/side
Your violence
Is already personal
Your mechanical eye
A reptilian mirror
Scaled
Static
Stiff
As the cool teeth of metal cages
You turn away from
So casually
As though your skull
Weren’t crunched in their closing.
Omar Zahzah is a writer, poet and organizer. In 2016, Omar’s chapbook 13 Almost Love Poems was released.Omar holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from UCLA. Twitter: @dromarzahzah