All-American Ghazal

Dujie Tahat

I’m not really from here unless I marry someone from here.

My father worked the fields. My mother teaches kids from here.

My uncles worked Alaskan canneries yet no form says I’m from here.

The myth is it’s mine, where I’m from. Say, Here,

and I’ll look. I know I have no book unless I tell you I’m from there.

Honey. Olives. Fish over rice. What did I leave out? From here

anyone could sing a great song. Here is where tragedy really comes from.

It’s not a random stranger who steals your goat. It’s the people you trust, here,

the most, the ones you’re closest to Dujie, so close to from here.

Dujie Tahat is a Filipino-Jordanian immigrant living in Washington state. They are the author of two chapbooks: Here I Am O My God, selected by Fady Joudah for a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship, and Salat, selected by Cornelius Eady as winner of the Tupelo Press Sunken Garden Chapbook Award. Along with Luther Hughes and Gabrielle Bates, they cohost The Poet Salon podcast.