Tarek Ghaddar

apology poem, written to my unpublished poems

I’m sorry I wrote about genocide,
children curled in the streets, crying,
bombs falling in staccato rhythm,
a percussion of crumbled buildings.

I’m sorry I wrote about Islamophobia,
being called a sandnigger and beaten to a pulp,
“you people,” at Target, in the frozen foods aisle,
and “you people” at the music store, and the
build the wall, Islam bans, UK acid attacks—

and I’m so sorry I didn’t alliterate in the 3rd and 5th line
of every other stanza, that when the mosque crescent was sliced into
two pathetic horns, and Uyghur minarets levelled by wrecking balls,
that I didn’t allude to sex, or have a slant rhyme in line nine, 

I’m sorry for saying, “my brothers and sisters are dying,” 
in the form of, “crimson flowers lined the streets,” 
instead of, “they called us terrorists and killed my family.”

I am so sorry, my unpublished poems, that I wrote you,
brought into existence to be rejected,
this is the Muslim-American experience, 

let the Muslims talk about Allah and war,
let them be about taking off hijabs for white boys,

not about the crow digging its beak into your sister’s spine, 
the re-education camps where your aunt is given to a Han man,
to be pinned down and have Islam cocked out of her,

never, never, never, let the Muslims have a human face,
this is the first rule, and if you do, my unpublished poems,
the nation may chant, “Send her back, send her back,” 

the color of your ink is all they care about,
and your ink is red, the color of genocide, 
red is the taste of the locker room floor,
blood dripping down your writer’s forehead,
because he worshipped Allah and his skin was brown—

you are the heirs of Gazans, Jnoub, Uyghurs, 
Syrians, and Yemenis. you, my unpublished poems, 
are owed so many apologies, for all the poems about
cedar trees, bar music, rondeaus, villanelles,
bouncing bodies, and growing old, that you were not.


Tarek Ghaddar grew up in Beirut, Lebanon. He attended the University of Miami for degrees in Biochemistry and English. He continued with a Master's in Public Health at the Miller School of Medicine, and will shortly be attending medical school at Florida Atlantic University. Trauma from war and his sister's cancer led him to pick up a pen. His work has been published in Eclectica Literary Magazine, Mangrove Literary Journal, Prometheus Dreaming, South Florida Poetry Journal, GASHER Journal, and The Emerson Review. He lives in Boca Raton.