Hate Has No Home Here

by Shooooz

Listen, when I describe how
A sign typeset in
English and
Spanish and
Arabic and
Korean and
Reading
“Hate has no home here”
Makes home feel foreign

Listen, when I narrate how
My joints earthquake in the face of
Faceless signage
How the people it is meant to convince are
In hiding
Inside and
The people who can read the languages
On the signage outside
Are just passing by
Are only ever just passing by

Listen, when I point out
The scent of fresh-baked revisionism
Lingering in the air
While the woman in the window
With the perfect beachy hair
Bends over the oven and
She has no face
Just a thin, wide-spaced font
Across her front
Typeset in too many tongues to count
Against her pastel front door
And succulents
And the interlocking squares of her
Minimalist décor

Listen, when I reveal how
Hate has no home here
But it has built itself a condo

Shooooz is an artist, writer, and performance poet whose work has been featured in the Sakura Review, MuslimGirl, Infection House, and Finding the Birds. She is the founder and director of Manifest Creativity, a Pittsburgh-based initiative centering Muslim artists and other marginalized voices. Shooooz features as Pittsburgh’s 2019 Steel City Slam Champion. She previously represented Seattle at the 2018 National Poetry Slam and co-directed the Muslim Writers Collective in Seattle. Find her at  shooooz.wordpress.com, on Instagram @juhizzle, or on Twitter @shoooozpoetry. 

City of Asylum believes that All Pittsburghers are Poets. With the Poem of the Week series, we seek to increase the readership and appreciation of poetry locally by publishing poems written by residents of Allegheny County of all ages and levels of experience. In partnership with the Poetry Editors at Sampsonia Way Magazine, City of Asylum advances our mission to defend, celebrate, and build on creative freedom of expression. This project received a RADical ImPAct Grant from the Allegheny Regional Asset District (RAD).