TAMER MOSTAFA
My Grandmother Would Have Loved Chick-fil-A
Not just for the food but because they’re closed on Sundays & Sundays are for nostalgia & I feel
bad that she settled for Wendy’s all those years when she could have enjoyed biscuits
waffle-fries & an owner glorifying god quicker than he can pressure fry chicken They
say Truett Cathy was a faithful steward to the end & and he was born in 1921 months before
her & we all make our choices but what an opportunity missed & today is the first day of E’id,
2017, the holiday after Ramadan’s hunger is quenched & my grandmother lies in bed, drenched
in the dearth of mortem & she is holding her Jesus somewhere, disclosing the antitheses that
tried to deceive her, the ones she withstood so where is my kingdom she asks & over the
next two days of E’id, I help clean out her apartment & stop counting at 16 bibles, some on
nightstands ladled in yellow Wendy’s napkins & I remember the only time I went to church as a
child & the adults made us race against each other in a circle outlined in chalk on the blacktop
like a hypnotic spiral & they kept howling Jesus Saves Jesus Saves Jesus Saves & we
converged in the middle of this circle true to the galaxies we were & in the middle of this circle
was a stuffed animal for every chase & each child who didn’t win had to go again, until they
could hold up their animals like war spoils but I was chubby & I was slow &
Jesus couldn’t save the surges of baby weight suffocating my lungs & Jesus couldn’t save me
from being the last one left without a stuffed animal & they made me run again and against
myself until their faces salted the night like the stars on our flag & different colored plush hung
from their fingers like marionettes & when I collapsed in the middle of their circle clasping a
synthetic lion, they broke out in song I am a C I am a C-H I am a
C-H-R-I-S-T-I-A-N YEE-HAW & I left church more Muslim than I’ll ever be & my
grandmother still loves her blood & curses my pick for god
but how is it that she hated Islam & died on a Muslim holiday & I’m the first to her grave before
the wake & I’m the last to tell her story minus my damnations & it’s better than all the
other stories & after the wake I take chicken from the chafer grill & heap it on my plate piece by
piece like shrine stones & I hide behind this edifice of chicken swamped in blind spots
not believing this is as good as it could be & then I start eating
Not just for the food but because they’re closed on Sundays & Sundays are for nostalgia & I feel
bad that she settled for Wendy’s all those years when she could have enjoyed biscuits
waffle-fries & an owner glorifying god quicker than he can pressure fry chicken They
say Truett Cathy was a faithful steward to the end & and he was born in 1921 months before
her & we all make our choices but what an opportunity missed & today is the first day of E’id,
2017, the holiday after Ramadan’s hunger is quenched & my grandmother lies in bed, drenched
in the dearth of mortem & she is holding her Jesus somewhere, disclosing the antitheses that
tried to deceive her, the ones she withstood so where is my kingdom she asks & over the
next two days of E’id, I help clean out her apartment & stop counting at 16 bibles, some on
nightstands ladled in yellow Wendy’s napkins & I remember the only time I went to church as a
child & the adults made us race against each other in a circle outlined in chalk on the blacktop
like a hypnotic spiral & they kept howling Jesus Saves Jesus Saves Jesus Saves & we
converged in the middle of this circle true to the galaxies we were & in the middle of this circle
was a stuffed animal for every chase & each child who didn’t win had to go again, until they
could hold up their animals like war spoils but I was chubby & I was slow &
Jesus couldn’t save the surges of baby weight suffocating my lungs & Jesus couldn’t save me
from being the last one left without a stuffed animal & they made me run again and against
myself until their faces salted the night like the stars on our flag & different colored plush hung
from their fingers like marionettes & when I collapsed in the middle of their circle clasping a
synthetic lion, they broke out in song I am a C I am a C-H I am a
C-H-R-I-S-T-I-A-N YEE-HAW & I left church more Muslim than I’ll ever be & my
grandmother still loves her blood & curses my pick for god
but how is it that she hated Islam & died on a Muslim holiday & I’m the first to her grave before
the wake & I’m the last to tell her story minus my damnations & it’s better than all the
other stories & after the wake I take chicken from the chafer grill & heap it on my plate piece by
piece like shrine stones & I hide behind this edifice of chicken swamped in blind spots
not believing this is as good as it could be & then I start eating
The Night Bone Thugs-n-Harmony Reunited
My father is a learned magician,
morphing fingers through the flesh of his stomach
to wish that the seamed scar would fish out
decades-old nine-millimeter fragments
layered short like staccato notes.
He traces their origins,
fleeing from the park named after victory.
His hands blister,
depleted and dripping with red wax
before disappearing in a smoke snap
and he tucks the city’s secrets with him,
a double-edged sword
suctioned through his nose
because the conundrum of bullet wounds
is that they are still prone
like a mandolin’s sound hole
busied by bronze strings,
ordering their beginnings
be remedied, or at least
reconsidered to nothingness.
I ask the city for my father’s return,
stow his picture to each passerby
ignoring the vortex of its history,
a needle slipping from vinyl.
The year on back is ’88,
he blesses the foam from a forty ounce,
belly-dances the concrete to survival with a broom stick
buffed with steam and blood,
a keffiyeh tied at the waist
spinning like an inferno,
and I tell myself
that the music must be true
to keep his magic for this long.
My father is a learned magician,
morphing fingers through the flesh of his stomach
to wish that the seamed scar would fish out
decades-old nine-millimeter fragments
layered short like staccato notes.
He traces their origins,
fleeing from the park named after victory.
His hands blister,
depleted and dripping with red wax
before disappearing in a smoke snap
and he tucks the city’s secrets with him,
a double-edged sword
suctioned through his nose
because the conundrum of bullet wounds
is that they are still prone
like a mandolin’s sound hole
busied by bronze strings,
ordering their beginnings
be remedied, or at least
reconsidered to nothingness.
I ask the city for my father’s return,
stow his picture to each passerby
ignoring the vortex of its history,
a needle slipping from vinyl.
The year on back is ’88,
he blesses the foam from a forty ounce,
belly-dances the concrete to survival with a broom stick
buffed with steam and blood,
a keffiyeh tied at the waist
spinning like an inferno,
and I tell myself
that the music must be true
to keep his magic for this long.
Tamer Sa’id Mostafa (pronouns: he/him/his) is an always-proud Stockton, California native whose work has appeared in over twenty various journals and magazines such as Confrontation, Monday Night Lit, and Literary Orphans among others. As an Arab-American Muslim, he reflects on life through spirituality, an evolving commitment to social justice, and the music of Bone Thugs-n-Harmony.