Rifqa

by Mohammed El-Kurd

There’s a spear in my waist and spears in my back.

“The most tragic of disasters are those that cause laughter.”

Birth lasts longer than death. In Palestine death is sudden,

I was born among poetry

You are Damascus and you are the gate.

came home a martyr never a father.

indulged upon embroidered destinies constant Nakbas tragedy pillowed and bedroomed made normal:

In my lonely I spend time shoving ghosts off of balconies.

One nose away from clouds. I have my grandmother’s

excusesbeliefs of the chosen and the promised as if God is a real-estate agent.

It is the same killing; they do it in whispers.

It’s the same killing everywhere. Seventy-some years later we haven’t lived a day.

and “national heroes” roll dice, roll corpses after posing with them, homecoming and championed.

and they have stolen the wicks of the stars.

Qalandiyah is gray often.

I tell her I’ve got both bags, not as heavy as they seem not as heavy as she’s lived.

In the middle of nowhere, I just feel so alone.

Poems won’t build a house.

& I want to kiss her back.

I’ve been meaning to take all the breaths I need.

Thereisnotmuch else I’d like to share about my adolescence I’m bored with the metaphors

Used to pimp my pain/ Now I merely exploit it

What does that say about me?This isn’t an epiphany, though Poems aren’t for that

Not a poem nor a post is enough to turn the post they live under into a tent.

There is no poetry in suicide and no poetry in cigarettes,

I’m often to blame keeping a dozen dead horses under my bed. remorseful poems to those illiterate in remorse.

There are prophets in psych wards,

She blamed herself for the blue in my bones, God rest her soul.

It is those who are spineless who cannot buy themselves a spine.

This fight is a revolution until victory.

It is to “women and children” Palestinians to death—to infantilize Palestinians in hopes of determining that, indeed, they deserve liberation.

A Palestinian man cannot just die. For him to be mourned, he must be in a wheelchair or developmentally delayed, a medical professional, or noticeably elderly at the very least. Even then, there are questions about the validity of his victimhood.

I no longer feel the responsibility to give humans eyes for humanity.

I have seen Palestine dwindle in size and spirit like a decaying loved one. I refuse to wait in the wreck.