by Ari Mokdad

She whispered into the chaos of a silent room.
Feeling dissatisfied with society, modernity, reality,
Democracy, patriarchy, the lack of culture —y, everything pointing to “other.”
But this; the hitchhiker’s guide to time travel and seeing the world—
the way the good always comes with the bad and not even the engineers
could help design a way out.  Let me first classify this as a poem, 
but you all want to see it on paper. Second, I can validate its accuracy
as more than just words on the page. When we all decide, at the end of this, 
that we fabricated these tools, this two-car garage, this idea of comfort, 
the glass gazing ball, the coffee mug too full or not full enough, hammer,
nails, the carpet fraying—we can all set it aflame with iron rods staked into the heart
of this multitude. Do you believe that the future of this world might be
resting in the hands of a brown girl? But don’t worry, we’ve denied their entry—so to hang
onto the fragile existence that allows you to feel relevant against the white background.  
You see, I’m not like you. I am in control of the frequency, this oscillator, or the meter, or the
rhythm and rhyme, or the way in which you see me. So let me be this butterfly—let
me be the caterpillar—still learning to feast from the Lake Michigan milkweed,
crawling gently across the multi-cultural sands.