To the Atlantic God of Carnage

Appeared in Fikra Magazine, 21 March 2024

To the Atlantic God of Carnage

Khalil Sima'an 


Pick up my limbs


like wet oysters


on the bloodied

Atlantic shorelines,

collect my parts


on the waterlines


of war vessels

mighty and cold.


Like wind I spread

an intermittent whisper 

of frothy foam 

over the waves

like a bleeding cloud, 

sticky and damp, 

in a heavens 

of flesh and bones. 


With broken wings 

I come to you, a child

solemn and black 

I come to your shorelines,

a corpse

a dirty cloth, 

a blood bundle 

of my remains. 


God of carnage, 

I beseech thee:


I cannot be unborn

I will not be bottled 

I will not be rubbed 

an obedient 

enslaved genie. 

I will not be


trapped in a lamp. 


I come to you


ten thousand 

burned children,

I come to you


on a gold plate,


I stand again


at your closed gate 

and I wait,

I will wait and wait 

and I will sing 

with the children 

of the Native

Americans

and the children 

of Africans 

and all those 

you have enslaved;


the extinct tiger

the utter madness

in the bones of white men

the white colonies,

the raw skeletons, 

the elements of valleys

and coarse mountains,

the elements

of the raging 

bull of Wall Street 

and the pissing


Petit Julien


of grey Brussels. 


I cannot be unborn

I will not be bottled 

I will not be rubbed 

an obedient 

enslaved genie. 

I will not be


trapped in a lamp. 


A flapping flock 

of dry bloodstains 

on white canvas

I fly to you,

my mother’s screams

on TV screens


my father’s burned face 

on the covers of magazines,


I come to you


like bloodied breakfast 

cereal with morning news


like a dead turkey

in Thanksgiving

like the echoes of carnage 

chiming with Christmas hymns

in the White House’s

hall of no shame.


I come to you


and I won’t wait


for the dead word

of the white masters

of “the free world”

drunk and arrogant, 

greedy and ignorant,

lulling the old

dormant conscience

into mass graves

with a cold kiss

putrid and stoned

from the foul mouth 

of crossbones. 


In a bottle I float 

towards your shorelines

a Sufi song

tall and serene,


a whirling gown,

solemn and white, 

a swaddled newborn, 

a white caped darwish

in a coffin. 


Bury me now

in memory 

know me as


a wild nightmare: 

I cannot be unborn

I will not be bottled 

I will not be rubbed 

an obedient 

enslaved genie. 

I will not be


trapped in a lamp.