Nasser Alsinan

They’re Selling Our Blood at the Dollar Tree

I break my last piggy bank at the cashier’s register
and buy a few of my brothers at a premeditated discount.

We drive back together and I drop them off at their broken
homes. My brothers thank me and then sit down. They begin

eating the rubble with their right hands, offering me some
as a sign of courtesy. Their bones are sticking out of their

skin and I can hear them weeping. My brothers
are eating their homes. They are eating

broken tombstones stained with cheap children
blood. I tell them that no flowers are going to grow

on their graves and then I head back to the Dollar Tree,
where you are watching the T.V. and it’s saying that a premeditated war

has been waged to wage peace and the people on the T.V. that look like us are dying
they’re being killed slaughtered bombed shot they’re all dying again they’re being killed

but it’s okay    these things happen over there to the brown-eyed scum to the
terrorists to the people on the T.V. that look like us.

Because if my mama and baba were bombed right now, if my little sister
11 years old was bombed right now,     I would hear you      cheering on the troops.

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Nasser Alsinan is from Qatif, Saudi Arabia. His work has been previously published in Barzakh and Bear Review. More of his writings can be found on his Twitter page @nasser_alsinan