Hidden Bombs In My Coochie

 by Threa Almontaser 

Honorable Mention, 2019 Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize
selected by Tarfia Faizullah

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my accent not arab enough 
to haggle   people know I’m not native 
from my swaying 
flux   in the city   rundown brick-slabs
the lost nipping your heels 
for a soft touch    
an outlaw asks where home is    
finds it funny when I say demi yemeni 
I board the plane back 
to my birthplace   sturdy 
blue proof in my pocket
alien again when I land 

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I sing two anthems
squeeze a moshed lineage
in every boxed foyer 
I walk   baba still speaks to me 
in arabic   but we listen 
to britney spears   watch family feud   
remind ourselves of yemen 
with the kubz as utensil   
when we kiss cheeks 
in odd numbers   remember 
a grove’s perfuming   
before the marooned onslaught   
when children didn’t play
the game with charcoal & cotton    
called   who can make 
gas masks the fastest 

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when I step outside
violence becomes a rising
of my neck hairs   running 
through a murky two-lane 
out of breath so I don't end up 
like bambi’s mama shot dead 
in my tracks   I can’t say 
I never saw it coming 
curled fetal in a forest 
caucasian man’s bullet in this
dumb blah brain   my small son 
waiting in a tree’s shadow for me
to surge up from the tall grass 
nudge his wet dark nose 
with my nose   

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in america I am automatic:
towelhead & hidden 
bombs in my coochie 
ass fat for that Isis
dick 9/11 suss lookin’
bitch that sandy-toed
camel fucker cousin fucking 
to make more terrorist 
babies a fourth wife 
mia khalifa in a burkha 
lookin’ bitch long rifle 
nose from your uncle 
bin laden lil’ bitch

٥
amreeka settles my body 
into place   it unbends 
the flick of my wrist 
when I talk   turns 
my femurs into fire escapes   
eyes canonized chasms   
my neck’s axis craning 
down   it tells baristas 
my name is tina  
tongue ebbing far away 
from me   
the news makes me believe 
I was born to cock 
back this rifle sleek & steady 
like a true terrorist the news 
makes me want to grab 
my phone & gun
it out the country 
the news makes me touch 
myself   find the panic 
button of my body 
& press hard

Threa Almontaser is a Yemeni-American writer, translator, and multimedia artist from New York City. She received her MFA from North Carolina State University and is the recipient of fellowships from Tin House, Community of Writers, the Fine Arts Work Center, and the Kerouac House. She is the winner of Alternating Current’s Unsilenced Grant for Muslim American Women Writers and Tinderbox Journal’s Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Poetry Prize, among other honors. Nominated or included in the Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets, and Best of the Net, her work has previously appeared or is forthcoming from Random House, The Offing, American Literary Review, Adroit, Wildness, Frontier, Oxford Review, and elsewhere. Threa writes on the thin membrane that separates human from what we loosely call animal, and believes writing should not only entertain, but provoke. She teaches English to immigrants and refugees in Raleigh while co-organizing a reading and discussion series in the area which promotes the work of undocumented poets and poets of color, raising consciousness about the structural barriers that they face in the literary community. She is currently at work on several projects, including a debut poetry collection and her first novel. For more, please visit threawrites.com.