To Huck Finn from Awale Farah
-Jasira Beauty Salon, Seattle, 1999

When you lit out for the Territory
you didn't know I traveled
with you, hungry
months of sagebrush,
dust in the red sky.

I watched your bright face
slowly sadden: greed
grew under Western cloth.

Greed too harvested my country,
boys with AK 47s.
I watched my father disappear
into the gaping night,
soldiers circling like hyenas.

Lying along in a clapboard hotel
do you think of Jim, the raft,
brief shine of Mississippi stars.

Tonight, rivers of darkness.
What do I tell you?

We drift forever, you and I, faces
like moon light
breaking in the glass.

by Arelene Naganawa