"Colonialism."
At intersections, I knew to look both ways
as she had taught me, as she had known
to look both ways at the port of arrival--
not to Ellis Island or to JFK, but to the white blanket
of my father, then back to her mother, then away--
so that when the single summer we returned to the land
she had left, and the four of us--
she, myself, my two tanned brothers--
stood below the open Casablanca sun,
waiting on a thinly-grassed divider for a sliver to form
within the traffic, the air smart and nearly visible
as neighbor boys pointed down from windows--
"Mrikani, mrikani,"-- and I dashed through the exhaust
of four lanes--
not exactly a highway, but still too wide
to be crossing, and without a crosswalk no less.
She rushed to the other side and slapped my backside hard--
"Elash, mon fils?
Why would you do that to me?"