Dear Joumana

Mariam Bazeed

Dear Joumana,
platinum bride of Dearborn,
city named after secretary of war—
How does your golden hair flow?

In America’s Arabest
city, adjacent America’s Blackest
city, highways extend Ford’s dream
of efficiency, while Arabs convert

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garages into outdoor
18-person every-season banquet
halls,
then skin their knuckles
harvesting frost
-bite digging out cars
from wintry clutch of cold—
America’s tubers,
then hear themselves later
blown to smithereens,
news from somewhere
the American dollar is hard
at work—

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some other Muhammad—
some different Wafa—
& the cousin Elias who stayed.

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While Joumana—
platinum sentry of Dearborn
from billboards upon highways
spewing death into air,
as [car] exhaust,
& high school recruitment for faraway
oil war—asks

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