Content warning: Physical Violence or Abuse; Racism

On Seeing a Call for Political Violence

He was alive still, hacking thick blood up
like a disgusted ghost with a bruised lung
as I walked by, trying to ignore his long
groan like the rattle of a panhandler’s cup.

He was alive as a kicked, mangled, sick
heap of a human breathing, till the braying
boy who’d been bludgeoning him with a brick
swung one more time, and smiled as he yowled Khāyin!*.

If you had walked by him as I walked by,
afraid, ashamed, cursing your way to work,
wondering why you cannot even cry,
thinking yourself a coward or a jerk,

you’d know you do not want this. Lucky you
or anyone who can still think they do.

*”Traitor!” in Arabic

About the Author

A. Z. Foreman is a linguist, poet, short story author and/or translator pursuing a doctorate at the Ohio State University. His work has been featured in the Threepenny Review, ANMLY, Rattle, the Los Angeles Review and elsewhere including two people’s tattoos but not yet the Starfleet Academy Quarterly or Tattooine Monthly. He writes from the edge of thought between sleep and waking. He wants to pet your dog.