My Name is My Name Ami never let anyone call my sister Sam – it always had to be Samina. She said she’d rather be waterboarded than let her daughter be whitewashed by whites too conservative to spare the extra syllables. Ami never let anyone call...

The coastline’s smile is sharp with blackened teeth,
seabird shelters, scarps, cutaways, broken reefs:
the bloody mouth of a boxer who can’t be dropped,
punch drunk with the brain’s purple pounding . . .

Terrestrial locomotion
across concrete,
the inverted pendulum,
moving flesh and boot –

The passenger train along the Connecticut shoreline moves as if in a
river of wooden ties and steel rails. . .

There are blackbirds singing beautifully at dawn,
Mozart and Shakespeare existed and that’s fine . . .

Tonight, my houseplant child asks about sunlight,
brushes my arm as she stutters on the word,
photosynthesis . . .

When she asked what I wanted
to be when I grew up, my mother
laughed when I said ‘free’

At the End of the Class
The young woman in a hijab thanked/praised/appreciated me
For all I had shown/ encouraged/ inspired in her
Asked whether I observed/ took part in/ celebrated Rosh Hashanah?

I wrote the title of the lesson on the board and underlined it with a flourish. The class listened to my introduction.