Poems / October 7, 2024

Payee

Jessica Abughattas

We went one by one, then all at once, we left our father’s
house. Went outside and returned, sleeping children.
Forgetful then we remembered. We believed in our
father. We believed our father in heaven. We left the
house of our father. We left the house and our father is
in heaven. We left heaven and went to work in America.
We toiled and were paid by our father. We unionized
and made our father cry uncle. We were children. We
were not wrong. We lived under our grandmother’s sofa
cushion. We lived in a tract suburb made of the same
identical house. We took a limestone brick and placed it
in our house in the suburbs. Our house in the suburbs
was pink with palm trees and pink with limestone. Our
house in heaven. Our house in America where we
worked for our father. Our house in heaven where God
was limestone. Our limestone brick we planted in our
yard without a flag. Our flagless yard in the suburbs of
heaven where we only lived for God.

Jessica Abughattas

Jessica Abughattas is the author of Strip (University of Arkansas Press, 2020). Her poems can be found in Poetry, The Kenyon Review, The Yale Review, and elsewhere.

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