nabil anani, "palestinian folklore," 2020, acrylic on canvas
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Spoiler
by Hala Alyan
Can you diagnose fear? The red tree blooming from uterus
to throat. It’s one long nerve, the doctor says. There’s a reason
breathing helps, the muscles slackening like a dead marriage.
Mine are simple things. Food poisoning in Paris. Hospital lobbies.
My husband laughing in another room. (The door closed.)
For days, I cradle my breast and worry the cyst like a bead.
There’s nothing to pray away. The tree loves her cutter.
The nightmares have stopped, I tell the doctor. I know why.
They stopped because I baptized them. This is how my mother
and I speak of dying—the thing you turn away by letting in.
I’m tired of April. It’s killed our matriarchs and, in the back yard,
I’ve planted an olive sapling in the wrong soil. There is a droopiness
to the branches that reminds me of my friend, the one who calls
to ask what’s the point, or the patients who come to me, swarmed
with misery and astonishment, their hearts like newborns after
the first needle. What now, they all want to know. What now.
I imagine it like a beach. There is a magnificent sand castle
that has taken years to build. A row of pink seashells for gables,
rooms of pebble and driftwood. This is your life. Then comes the affair,
nagging bloodwork, a freeway pileup. The tide moves in.
The water eats your work like a drove of wild birds. There is debris.
A tatter of sea grass and blood from where you scratched your own arm
trying to fight the current. It might not happen for a long time,
but one day you run your fingers through the sand again, scoop a fistful out,
and pat it into a new floor. You can believe in anything, so why not believe
this will last? The seashell rafter like eyes in the gloaming.
I’m here to tell you the tide will never stop coming in.
I’m here to tell you whatever you build will be ruined, so make it beautiful.
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it is in your self-interest to find a way to be very tender
—Jenny Holzer, “Truisms” (1983–1985)
by Safia Elhillo
it’s true doctor i am a firstborn a daughter
a fluvial child of loss & yes of course
i love blame it is my government it is my god
my own hand ready to take fault when disaster ignites
(if i had only called then [ ] would still be alive)
(if i wasn’t so often gone the house would not
have been broken into) & at night i make ablution
& heave my leathered knees into a prayer
to ask the large & featureless creator why & why & why
& when i finish i fold the mat & rise
turn to my own face in the mirror & list
because because because
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Everything in Our World Did Not Seem to Fit
by Aziz Shihab
in Naomi Shihab Nye
Once they started invading us.
Taking our houses and trees, drawing lines,
pushing us into tiny places.
It wasn’t a bargain or deal or even a real war.
To this day they pretend it was.
But it was something else.
We were sorry what happened to them but
we had nothing to do with it.
You don’t think what a little plot of land means
till someone takes it and you can’t go back.
Your feet still want to walk there.
Now you are drifting worse
than homeless dust, very lost feeling.
I cried even to think of our hallway,
cool stone passage inside the door.
Nothing would fit for years.
They came with guns, uniforms, declarations.
LIFE magazine said,
“It was surprising to find some Arabs still in their houses.”
Surprising? Where else would we be?
Up on the hillsides?
Conversing with mint and sheep, digging in dirt?
Why was someone else’s need for a home
greater than our own need for our own homes
we were already living in? No one has ever been able
to explain this sufficiently. But they find
a lot of other things to talk about.
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Instructions for making Arabic Coffee
by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
Never let the coffee boil over,
you need to keep the crema
and spoon a little into each cup.
It’s like a smiling face to welcome your guests.
And never serve coffee without ground cardamom.
It’s like saying
I didn’t dress up for you, I put on no perfume.
And never serve your guests coffee without sugar.
It’s like saying
You are bitter company.
And never sweeten your lover’s afternoon coffee.
It’s like saying
Your lips aren’t sweet enough for me.
And never pour too much into one cup.
It’s like saying
My heart is too full for you.
And never serve the coffee without
a glass of water to quench
thirst and soften the conversation.
And never serve the coffee first.
It’s like saying
You’ve been here too long.
Coffee’s acrid kiss is for farewells.
And never
never in your whole livelong life
umrek bi hayaatek
never read your lover’s coffee cup.
It’s like saying
I am not afraid to lose you.
Fortune-telling is not
for the faint of heart.
Leave that to your mother
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“The Only Democracy in the Middle East”
by Aziz Shihab
in Naomi Shihab Nye
Please leave your house immediately.
Do not call it a home.
This is our home not yours.
Security demands it.
Always, always, security.
Our security.
Take nothing, ask nothing.
Stand over there, against the rubble, where
you belong. All young men, come with us.
You may not see your families again.
No saying goodbye or hugging.
We have suffered too much
thanks to everyone
but you are the only ones we can touch.
Don’t give us any trouble.
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Member of the Tribe
by Aziz Shihab
in Naomi Shihab Nye
Unfortunately it’s true.
Like it or not.
Educated or not.
This is one of the many things
Americans don’t understand about Iraq.
Kill a member of the tribe,
the whole tribe now hates you.
How could they not?
The Americans think they hate you today,
thank you tomorrow.
Tribes are like tape recorders,
they won’t forget. Don’t ask me how
Arabs kill Arabs, knowing this.
As for Afghanistan,
I don’t understand that at all.
I don’t understand so many things.
Still, we must tell what we know.
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When One Is So Far from Home, Life Is a Mix of Fact and Fiction
by Aziz Shihab
in Naomi Shihab Nye
No one should hold that against you.
It’s a means of survival.
Sometimes I thought my best talent was
taking a skinny story, adding wings and a tail.
Dressing it in a woolen Bedouin cloak
with stitching around the edges.
Putting a headdress on it.
Making a better picture.
Your mother got mad at me sometimes
for telling a story differently but it wasn’t a lie,
just a story in different clothes
with other things emphasized.
My own mother dressed up stories for 106 years
till that last winter she rode in her bed
like a boat, sitting up to sleep.
Maybe it’s our duty to be shaped
a hundred times by the same stories.
We think we’re telling them
but really they’re keeping us alive,
memory oxygen breathed out and in.
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american-Palestinian incantation
by Fargo Nissim Tbakhi
absence makes the heart.
like water, i learn what shape to take
based on the space i must fill today.
i do not believe in object permanence.
i do not believe that dogs are my best friend.
i do believe in ghosts. you can fall in love with them.
on days i feel too solid,
i wear the border around my neck: black and white,
fishnet patterned, tasseled. this way
you do not have to wonder in which language my blood
moans. my veins a cyst filled to the brim.
like an arcade claw machine, i am far too good
at letting go: you do not text me for a day and i give you
a viking's funeral. i have learned that grief is better
when quick and efficient:
there is too much of it too often.
i was born a taurus in the year of the ox:
doubly stubborn, my feet grow three inches into the dirt
everywhere i walk. i am rooted.
what can i say? years ago, my grandfather dug
his heels in against the settlers. as for me,
i am half seraph and half queer.
i have taken the liberty of stitching
a dotted line into my skin. this way
you do not have to wonder which country
you're kissing. i do believe words
emerge from walls, not the other way
around. i do believe in parallel universes.
i believe that in one of them,
i belong somewhere. in one of them,
my grandfather and i at this very moment
are comparing shoe sizes. in one of them
i kiss his soles and taste a dirt i can name.
i wear the family photo album around my neck,
and the faces become new to me again each time
i open it. if i am not looking at something
it is not real — this makes me a baby. this makes me
palestinian. this makes me difficult to love.
what can i tell you? the things that made us remake us
again and again. i am nothing if not exhausted.
i believe in missiles. i believe in tunneling
underneath walls. i believe that god, too, has kissable feet.
what can i say? years ago, my grandfather looked away
and when he looked back, home was gone.
i do believe that if i do not blink,
if i only keep on looking,
it will come back.
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what i learned in the fire
by Safia Elhillo
my body is a pill, small, and love is the wrong man’s tongue to tell me so
my body dissolves
my body finds men who are water and calls them home
my body is everything that happened to me
love is a thing my body borrows to forget
love is a pill
my body is water.
my body is a tongue and love dissolves
love calls the wrong men home
love makes my body a stain and goes
looking for water on the wrong man’s tongue
love is a house, my body is a bath drawn in floodwater
my body trickles in through the floorboards
love is the carpet that i’ve ruined
love is an alternative to water,
love is just something to do until the wars start
my body is a border drawn up by some man long ago
love is everything that happened in between
love is the floorboards
my body is decoration
love ruined all the carpets
my body is the carpet
my body is the stain
love makes it all dissolve
love is an alternative to home
love is floodwater
my body burned to the ground
my body called the wrong man home
love started the fire
my body is everything that happened after
the wrong man is an alternative to love
the wrong man is a map
home is where he puts the lines
my body is a border drawn by accident
by the wrong man’s tongue
love makes scars on my body and calls them borders
the wrong man mistakes my body for a body of water
love let the wrong man decide what my body mistakes for home
love started the fire
my body is a house on fire
my body drew a bath in floodwater
the wrong man is floodwater
love and the wrong man are an alternative to hating my body
my body is a body of water, poured over everything that happened to me
my body makes every scar an island
the wrong man makes my body small, a pill
love makes the water
and my body dissolves
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Exit Interview
by Safia Elhillo
—after Eve Ewing
Q:
A: i was born here
Q:
A: where am i
A: from
Q:
A: from denotes a starting point
A: [a train running west from chicago]
Q:
A: [two miles from shore] [twenty years from now]
Q:
A: & go where
Q:
A: i was born here
Q:
A: i was born here
Q:
A: you draw the [border] you know the [answer]
Q:
A: what would you like me to [say]
A: that [exile] is [home] minus [country] how boring
Q:
A: [home] minus [from]
Q:
A: okay [country] minus [country]
A: how’s that
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Owl Song
by Margaret Atwood
I am the heart of a murdered woman
who took the wrong way home
who was strangled in a vacant lot and not buried
who was shot with care beneath a tree
who was mutilated by a crisp knife.
There are many of us.
I grew feathers and tore my way out of her;
I am shaped like a feathered heart.
My mouth is a chisel, my hands
the crimes done by hands.
I sit in the forest talking of death
which is monotonous:
though there are many ways of dying
there is only one death song,
the colour of mist:
it says Why Why
I do not want revenge, I do not want expiation,
I only want to ask someone
how I was lost,
how I was lost
I am the lost heart of a murderer
who has not yet killed,
who does not yet know he wishes
to kill; who is still the same
as the others
I am looking for him,
he will have answers for me,
he will watch his step, he will be
cautious and violent, my claws
will grow through his hands
and become claws, he will not be caught.
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Night walk
by Franz Wright
The all-night convenience store's empty
and no one is behind the counter.
You open and shut the glass door a few times
causing a bell to go off,
but no one appears. You only came
to but a pack of cigarettes, maybe
a copy of yesterday's newspaper --
finally you take one and leave
thirty-five cents in its place.
It is freezing, but it is a good thing
to step outside again:
you can feel less alone in the night,
with lights on here and there
between the dark buildings and trees.
Your own among them, somewhere.
There must be thousands of people
in this city who are dying
to welcome you into their small bolted rooms,
to sit you down and tell you
what has happened to their lives.
And the night smells like snow.
Walking home for a moment
you almost believe you could start again.
And an intense love rushes to your heart,
and hope. It's unendurable, unendurable.
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The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On
by Franny Choi
Before the apocalypse, there was the apocalypse of boats:
boats of prisoners, boats cracking under sky-iron, boats making corpses
bloom like algae on the shore. Before the apocalypse, there was the apocalypse
of the bombed mosque. There was the apocalypse of the taxi driver warped
by flame. There was the apocalypse of the leaving, and the having left—
of my mother unsticking herself from her mother’s grave as the plane
barreled down the runway. Before the apocalypse, there was the apocalypse
of planes. There was the apocalypse of pipelines legislating their way
through sacred water, and the apocalypse of the dogs. Before which was
the apocalypse of the dogs and the hoses. Before which, the apocalypse
of dogs and slave catchers whose faces glowed by lantern-light.
Before the apocalypse, the apocalypse of bees. The apocalypse of buses.
Border fence apocalypse. Coat hanger apocalypse. Apocalypse in
the textbooks’ selective silences. There was the apocalypse of the settlement
and the soda machine; the apocalypse of the settlement and
the jars of scalps; there was the bedlam of the cannery; the radioactive rain;
the chairless martyr demanding a name. I was born from an apocalypse
and have come to tell you what I know—which is that the apocalypse began
when Columbus praised God and lowered his anchor. It began when a continent
was drawn into cutlets. It began when Kublai Khan told Marco, Begin
at the beginning. By the time the apocalypse began, the world had already
ended. It ended every day for a century or two. It ended, and another ending
world spun in its place. It ended, and we woke up and ordered Greek coffees,
drew the hot liquid through our teeth, as everywhere, the apocalypse rumbled,
the apocalypse remembered, our dear, beloved apocalypse—it drifted
slowly from the trees all around us, so loud we stopped hearing it.
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Arabic
by Danusha Laméris
I don’t remember the sounds
rising from below my breastbone
though I spoke that golden language
with the girls of Beirut, playing hopscotch
on the hot asphalt. We called out to our mothers
for lemonade, and when the men
walking home from work stooped down,
slipped us coins for candy, we thanked them.
At the market, I understood the bargaining
of the butcher, the vendors of fig and bread.
In Arabic, I whispered into the tufted ears
of a donkey, professing my love. And in Arabic
I sang at school, or dreamt at night.
There is an Arab saying,
Sad are only those who understand.
What did I know then of the endless trail
of losses? In the years that have passed,
I’ve buried a lover, a brother, a son.
At night, the low drumroll
of bombs eroded the edges of the city.
The girls? Who knows what has been taken
from them.
For a brief season I woke
to a man who would whisper to me
in Arabic, then tap the valley of my sternum,
ask me to repeat each word,
coaxing the rusty syllables from my throat.
See, he said, they’re still here.
Though even that memory is faint.
And maybe he was right. What’s gone
is not quite gone, but lingers.
Not the language, but the bones
of the language. Not the beloved,
but the dark bed the beloved makes
inside our bodies.
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I Want to Die
by TARIQ LUTHUN
in the arms of everyone who’s ever loved me, each
appendage a tendril expanding into the ether
of every moment I am leaving behind. Know this: I have dabbled
in the enterprise of affection; cut my teeth on what it means
to hold and be held. Behold: everything that has ever been
labeled “mine” was stolen.
From me, but also now by me. The land:
from us, and now the land
we were stolen to. I belong to nothing
but my friends—those who have entrusted me
with the gift of caring for them. For years, I trained myself
to not feel for anything to spare myself of having to feel
for everything: no partner, no child; my parents will
soon be gone too. Can you blame me? I watched men
and women say things they don’t mean and claim lives
from bodies they won’t ever eat. Some can’t stomach
culling the protein from a fly, but drop before the silhouette
of a gun. Have you ever fallen for something empty
as a word? For me, it was joy—the way it bounces
when spoken. For years, I would whisper it hopelessly
to the moon. I thought nothing of it
until I found myself brave enough to chant before the sun—
it was in this light that I came to find
my peoples. I took shape among them:
Joy. Joy. Joy—what a lovely thing
to feel. But, then again, the word
doom exists—sometimes
it’s almost too fun not to say. Apocalypse.
Even cicada sounds lovely
with the right inflection. I wonder if
it’s stronger to nestle into the chest
of one’s sadness, or to lie about it.
Once, as a child, I spent a late summer night poking holes
into the window mesh that shielded us
against the bugs we had stolen
away from. Each puncture
a compromise with those creatures
seeking refuge. As I did it, I repeated the syllables:
sim-muh-nim, sim-muh-nim
caught between cinnamon and synonym. Letting each letter
pass through until the end of the word. I imagine that
when this world ends, it will happen like a boy
yearning to be released from a warm room—
little by little, not all at once; unbothered
by the thought of losing his place.
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