What I Learned in World History
that we’ll never pronounce our name right.
that for most of history, we were a blank space on a map.
that a country comes of age when it is colonized,
when it’s pulled from its spot at the lee of the rock,
when it is told it has,
when it is taught English and Spanish and Japanese,
stripped of its mother tongues,
when it’s buttoned up in amerikana, two piece suit,
neck wrung with black tie,
when it is named for your king
when it’s pinned to paper like a butterfly wing
when it is owned
when it is bought
when it is auctioned, occupied, reserved, cleansed, fashioned
into a feeding ground
molded into new forms, extracted from the skin of the earth—
crushed fruit chalice, powder-pulp of spices, rich red dye, and passed around
like hors d’oeuvres—
that i am human because i’m American.
that before Magellan arrived, we did not exist.
that we become real when we are prescribed ink, blood, currency,
that we become real through conquest.
Apostol Mohamed is a part-time student and part-time writer, focusing mainly on poetry and short stories. Their work has been featured in SamFiftyFour, The Promethean, and We the Writers, in which they were credited as Lex Mohamed, and he is currently working on an in-development project with Choice of Games. In their free time, they enjoy writing Letterboxd reviews and fan-fiction. He’ll never tell you his account name. His pronouns are he/they.
The Marbled Sigh 