to my Muslim brothers and sisters—
it seems like nary a decade
my people sat in the chair
you’ve been strapped to,
painted evil colors, waterboarded
by American imaginations,
extracted from stories
told by angry old men
at dinner tables
across the Midwest

in movies my people
congregated like rats
in fur hats, fingering
big red buttons, gathering
around samovars, plotting
destruction in the abstract,:
Freedom, the American Way,
Democracy, the color White,
and probably Baseball,
but all we did was line up
for bread or salo or maybe
(yes)
a pint of vodka
to help warm winter bones

but we too sang songs,
read Sherlock Holmes
to our children before bed,
tinkered with circuits
in moldy basements,
claimed a Russian
invented the helicopter
(Sikorsky)
but that’s just vanity—
the best evidence
of humanity

now you occupy
that unwelcome seat—
it cannot remain vacant
lest America forget
that fear is optional,
that love is easy,
and I wish I could sit
in your stead, present
my arms as proof
we all bleed red and blue