i remember my mother teaching me
how to peel an orange like a tangerine
‘it’s the same thing, just the skin’s tougher
you just need to get your nail
underneath
the rind’ like it was some big revelation and
then

i got home, put on the tv, sat there for
a while, thought about god, ate pan fried
toast w/ syrup, drank milk and slept.
i’ve had a million of those little revelations,
but they all seem like good foreplay
for whatever else after and

late last week Emma told me
she can’t find something
to care about, and i said
‘everything’s important’
‘but that’s just it
i have to pick’
which is such a shame
that we’re given time
to just sit here
and think about it. in high school

some kid used to call me paki taxi,
which i never understood because
i'm indian, and it always
seemed insensitive of him
to not know my lineage and just attack
later i did a presentation on witch
hunting, so i covered my
board in shiny foil
made my reflection project huge
like a monster and then talked about
how barbaric they were
for burning children
in massachusetts

that was probably around
the same time that they tortured
you and took you away from your
mother and asked you if your father
was Taliban while
you were probably just thinking
about sex and war and recycling
or whatever else

like me.

and how is it ok
for them to put young boys
in orange and
peel as if

one thing and
another
were the same