The Race Track
by Nader Elmakawi

“We’re going to the race track,”
she said first thing that morning,
“A day that would live on in Infamy”
our hearts sunk as
history jumped off the page
Sixty years earlier
after the first day of Infamy
the Santa Anita Race Track, converted into a concentration camp
A forgotten piece of history that
rendered meaningless all the talk of ‘we will never forget’
Stories of enemies in our midst
Networks of sleeping cells echoed stories
Of arrows carved through the fields
When they came for the Muslims we protested
in bright yellow shirts
The victims of Santa Anita
there with us, in the rain till dark
United not with their nation
but with their whole human family

Whether it was December 7
or September 11
Whether an attack on “us”
or an attack on “them”
We grieve just the same
As for victims of American Infamy,
of Nagasaki and Hiroshima
of Al-Shifah, Colombia
Chiapas and Baghdad
We stand united
not under some colorful rag
not with nations
tribes or clans but
With All Relations


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Updated: 4/22/04