Transatlantic (take one)

i

hararehandsworthharlemhavanahejaz

hejazhavanaharlemhandsworthharare

home is where the hurt is.

ii

You, the Americans. Untamed, prone to

silly little things like sun-down towns and genocide.

Glowing luminous in our Queen’s English textbooks. Us, the lost children of the Estuary,

needing your beacons to kindle the corners of our dark rooms.

Before that, all I could claim was the currency of expat TV channels and lost years.

Our very fabric uncoils into an exchange of hands

and drizzled hums. I think of Duty Free and glazed biscuits at Terminal 1,

the closest I got to tasting your lips. They don’t make ‘em like that in my country.

Not that one. I meant, my other country. I mean, I live the exported script.

And you? The sequel. Ain’t it funny, truly yaa akhi,

how everything comes full circle?