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The state of Israel and the justification for its existence are a crimes against all of humanity. The state is the worst of the human spirit manifested into a fully functioning government.
Solidarity is a feeling and a doing. It is a series of choices we make with one another. It can only be felt. It cannot be contrived or manipulated. Solidarity is not just about our shared pain or struggle but also, most importantly, about our shared joy, visions, and dreams. It is an energetic force and a resounding love.
What do you say to the children for whom the Red Sea doesn’t part? —from “No Moses in Siege,” p 31
We are more than what was done to us; we are who we’ve become in spite of it all.
God has become a refugee, sir. —Rashid Hussein
Birth lasts longer than death. In Palestine death is sudden, instant, constant, happens in between breaths.
sometimes dipping my bread in indulgence, knowing a child is breadless, in Khan Yunis, dipped in a roof’s rubble …
If you ask me where I’m from it’s not a one-word answer. Be prepared seated, sober, geared up.
If hearing about a world other than yours makes you uncomfortable, drink the sea, cut off your ears, blow another bubble to bubble your bubble and the pretense. Blow ...
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My father told me: “Anger is a luxury we cannot afford.” Be composed, calm, still—laugh when they ask you, smile when they talk, answer them, educate them.
In Jerusalem, every footstep is a grave. This was only love: her skeleton is that of the tree’s, roots stitched into land into identity. Separation is like unmaking love ungluing names to places undoing God. A
A soldier as old as a leaf born yesterday pulls a trigger on a woman older than his heritage.
Tired of being my mother’s favorite stranger.
I am her fingers rolling grape-leaves till they taste like a fire pit warming my exile, muffling my diaspora. Hookah out of honeyed apples, smoke where once was sex.
In my lonely I spend time shoving ghosts off of balconies. I ...
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“And We have put before them a barrier / and behind them a barrier / and blinded them, so they do not see.”
I believed to be true, possible, the face of earth before dawn, when my mother picked figs prayed allahu akbar and when she shelved her screams, sipping tea with meramiya. Mother and the sage were daughters of the mountain; the quiet they offered, sometimes.
I see you standing like the cedars, standing at the height of my memory, in the green of the moon. I see you coming like the wind, coming. The door falls beneath the wind and rain. —Mahmoud Darwish
I cried—not for the house but for the memories I could have had inside it.
Do not reconcile even if they gift you gold. If I were to gouge out your eyes and place gems in their place would you still see? —Amal Dunqul
on most days we weep in advance.
What do you say to children for whom the Red Sea doesn’t part?
Tell our children the word soldier means what it shouldn’t that terrorists look nothing like what God on TV says they should. Tell them monsters do exist
The soldier, blonde and sunburnt, asks her for her permit. My permit: these wrinkles older than your country’s existence.
They talk about me and say, those folks. I’m exultant though. I sit at the party and the feedback hesitates. Oh, I forgot to tell you, I spoke of the massacre at the party.
My friends tell me I need to be talking, explaining the slayer to the slain—Doctor, what if I told you I distrust civilization and the civilized, that I’d ratherpick lice off my brother’s head thanpick the sanity off my own?
Grief the teacher and shame the compass. I am often moved not moving. I’d rather snatch the apple out my own throatI want to snatch the apple out my own throat. I want my voice voiceless. Place gems in my sockets and I’ll pretend I can see.
I don’t believe in conversation or reconciliation or crows gouging out my eyes. My father was a million fire ants. Millionaires giving out charity as if it’s charity when cents don’t make a dent. We’re supposed to say thanks. They acknowledge our blood on their hands.
We live like walking debris, swallow snakes, swallow whole pharmacies, wrap our spines around the fingers of bank tellers, while Bush is at a Joanne’s picking the perfect blue.
Why America? Be careful! Tell them, “America is the reason.” Tell them, “Drink the sea.” Let them ride their tallest horses. Jerusalem is ours. The biggest punch line of all time.
If “Israel” is venom in a snake’s fang our youth have defanged the snake. —Abu Arab
They asked what’s my problem with the police? Nothing, I answered. Nothing but the cuffs on my hands and feet. The bruises and the rifle butts. They’re arresting everyone and their mother. Arresting broomsticks and donkeys. Arresting schoolgirls with Palestinian flags. Our beloved speaker system. A kite, a hat, my threshold for shock.
I learned that poetry is planting a bomb in a garden—a masquerade. Language is not free.
