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X-Ray Diptych in Ben Gurion Airport

By Tarik Dobbs

The way the lead vest cover reveals more midriff than it should. The way your shoe soles slide out effortlessly. Still you remember how latex gloves press inside your waistband your belt is your last dignitary. Your suitcase dumped out & iPhones still produce their unlock tone. & back there you recall how bone is harder to pass through—could it show your white father? shortening your suicide bomb potential. Hold your straight face when one guard taps you on Grindr while another is off with your passport. & after baggage claim you hear how an airport magazine stand empties. & there is you & there is an officer. You learn how to repeat yourself: yes I have arrived early yes three hours yes sir yes ma’am in hebrew & arabic. another one of the guards gesticulates wildly at the first & pushes you through. You thank god. The seven-thirty-seven leaves twenty minutes late because a pilot waits for you. Remember how the flight attendant watches you. Remember how she doesn’t bring you water so you drink from the no drinking lavatory sink.

When the x-ray’s inventor captured his first image, his wife’s hand was the subject. Upon seeing her blurred finger bones, she said, I have seen my death. Now, I stand waiting for my picture. Here, I’m illuminated from inside by an anonymous photographer & I wonder, was there a flash? There must have been a flash inside me—my frame lit up like Christ. Mas. Irradiating the body is cumulative: the more x-rays, the more poison. In middle school, my mother took us tanning to beat winters. The body compounds lack: when the mother lacks light, does her child inherit absence? Today, I sleep in a room with no blinds. Do I carry radiation like a sadness? Do I irradiate generations? Today, I broke the fixture outside my door, so the bulb always stays lit. What did cops do before our bodies could be machine measured? & if surveillance’s etymology is a vigil: in front of this x-ray, am I my mother’s devotional service? When a Ramallah man saw settlements growing, he said, I look out of the window & see my death getting near.

 

 

Listen to Tarik Dobbs read his winning work:

https://www.palettepoetry.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/X-Ray-Diptych-in-Ben-Gurion-Airport.mp3

Tarik Dobbs

—2nd Place Winner of the 2020 Spotlight Award—

Tarik Dobbs is a queer, Arab American poet from Dearborn, MI. They have received fellowships from Bucknell Young Poets & the Hopwood Program. Their poems appear/forthcoming in Passages North, The Journal, & AGNI Magazine.

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