​Tamar Mostafa
​

Hearing Arabic for the Last Time

At a makeshift worktable, my aunt Sahar cores zucchini squash
during a backgammon match, and admonishes
her opponent for palming checkers in their pocket.
With a Cleopatra cigarette snagged between the fingers,
she is a rambling medium to the obedience that subdued
her bones once before. The agony becomes bilingual
when the iron of her accent grinds a second language
down to its nubs so that nobody else can answer back.
While bearing off her last checker, she embellishes
the triumph, and goads us to believe we each have something liminal
to testify, even God himself. Yesterday, my aunt Sahar died,
and I’m sad for all the wrong reasons.

---

Muslim Hillbilly
-after Ross Gay

If I find myself constricted
by a pigskin leather jacket, rocking
the runners of an oak chair across the stone
brick patio that provokes winter to leave
at once, do not cut me off.
Please pour one more mouthful
of single-batch bourbon,
torch a medium-bodied Cohiba,
and add a sin for each ballad
I play. Ordain my naked head
a wool Stetson to shelter
the hungry garden that awaits.
Give thanks, and say
Alhamdulillah.

---

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Tamer Said Mostafa (he/him/his) is a therapist, poet, and storyteller from Stockton, California. His work has appeared in literary journals and magazines such as Guernica, Confrontation, Prairie Schooner, and Freezeray among others. Tamer is a Best of the Net and Pushcart nominee, and a graduate of the Creative Writing program at University of California, Davis.