Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza

by Mosab Abu Toha

I speak Arabic and English, but I don’t know in what language my fate is written. I’m not sure if that would change anything.

A poem is not just words placed on a line. It’s a cloth.

I weave my poems with my veins. I want to build a poem like a solid home, but hopefully not with my bones.

Holy fuck this is very similar to my entrance. Kinda took my breath away

I like to go to the beach and watch the sun as it sinks into the sea. She’s going to shine on nicer places, I think to myself.

They once said Palestine will be free tomorrow. When is tomorrow? What is freedom? How long does it last?

In Gaza, you can find a man planting a rose in the hollow space of an unexploded tank shell, using it as a vase.

I hated death, but I hated life, too, when we had to walk to our drawn-out death, reciting our never-ending ode.

ON A STARLESS NIGHT

my grandpa lost his memory he forgot the numbers the people he forgot home

i place your photo in an earthenware pot i water it every monday and thursday at sunset i was told you used to fast those days on ramadan i water it every day

HARD EXERCISE In Gaza, breathing is a task, smiling is performing plastic surgery on one’s own face, and rising in the morning, trying to survive another day, is coming back from the dead.

The scent of coffee still hangs in the air. But where is the kitchen?

Their ears hurt when they hear sirens, but we are made deaf by explosions.

You will ask for my web site. I am no spider, and my site is wherever a rose grows,

my mother was born in Jabalia, the largest refugee camp in Gaza, and in the world.