Fresh new poem!

A couple of years ago I was fed the fuck up with people telling me I didn’t look Palestinian. And I started to worry that maybe I wasn’t. After all, my mother had been married multiple times, so maybe I was the product of the rekindling of an old flame. I took a DNA test to find out for sure.

As I waited for the results, I had an identity crisis. What if I’m not who I think I am? What if the people I think of as my family actually aren’t related to me? Whose child am I?

Irony of ironies, the test revealed I’m exactly 50% Palestinian, just as I’d been told. But the other half, which was supposed to be a mix of Irish, Scottish, and French, came back mostly Welsh. Funny how when I told people I was Pali they doubted me, but I’d been accidentally lying to people my whole life about my other half and no one questioned it.

I wrote a poem about it all called “meander scars” and I’m thrilled it’s out now in the latest issue of Snarl Journal!