patry 🇵🇸🇨🇩🇸&#x1f > Recent Status Updates

“What is a fact in Arabic is debatable in English,contentious. Thing is, I couldn’t care less.Say evict& I’ll still say theft.hyperlink them to death. ”

“I don’t have time for paranoia. Won’t flip rocks or look for merit in the death threats. If they come for me, let them: I’ve made my amends.Would be contentin my coffin. It is those stuffing sand inmy mouth that worry me most saying there are softer ways to say this. Thing is I don’t want to be soft. Don’t want to humanize shit. Look at my limbs, look at this earth.”

“Atlanta—woman,black-haired and brown-skinned,goes to the ER under the bridgewhere her hips were cracked openby men who are sometimes her uncles,sometimes her lovers,sometimes her choice.”

“She wants to carry thirty-five mountains. I tell her I’ve got bothbags, not as heavy as they seemnot as heavy as she’s lived.”

“US soldier admits killing unarmed Afghans for sport:Jeremy Morlock, 23, tells US military courthe was part of a “kill team” that faked combatsituations to murder Afghan civilians.—Guardian, March 23, 2011”

“Otherwisenail file becomes the villain, despitecontext. Context: they want catsdeclawed, they want knocked doorsunanswered, they want the other cheek.Terrorist Avenges. Headlines delusional.Are all heads equal?7 Is a soldier’s heartequal to her brother’s? I’ll hold my arsenal.When they ask me next time,I’ll say God held her hand.”

“It’s the same killingeverywhere.Seventy-some years laterwe haven’t lived a day.”

“Do not reconcileeven if they gift you gold.If I were to gouge out your eyesand place gems in their placewould you still see?—Amal Dunqul”

“Nowadays she walks fragile,so unlike the past that she battled,so unlike the past nameless faces remembered on her wrinkled face.They tell the story of the particular events:organized, plural,ongoing.”

“No matter how deep it drowns,the truth always washes ashore.”

“The colonizersyouthfuldifferently clothedrifles smacking against their hipsterrorist nationcelebrated stolen propertycallous.I cried—not for the housebut for the memories I could have had inside it.”

“Years passed children became my aunts my father the twenty-first centurydidn’t stop the Nakba from continuing years of resistance popular fever and rashes unable to stop this cancer from spreading.May 15, 1998,I was born before a closed housethat I called mine but have never been in.After nine years of fines paychecks and play checks it was for them not us.”

“1967another Nakbaanother man-made catastrophenames of placesdispossessednames on tombstonesrewritten”

“Invaderscame back once again,claimed the landwithfists and fireexcusesbeliefsof the chosen and the promisedas if God is a real-estate agent.”

“grandmaa lucky refugeegrew vines of roses around the house;this time the roses had thornsjust in case.”

“A pulling pressure, soldiered:occupiers occupy her limbs,untangling a grandmother.A soldier as old as a leaf born yesterdaypulls a trigger on a woman older than his heritage.Two martyrs fall.Onemartyrfalls.Here, every footstep is a grave,every grandmother is a Jerusalem.”

“You are the prisoner andyou are the cell.”

“Born on the brink of a breath.On the brink of a death,pain teeths in your mother.Your throat’s a minaret.The hospital bed—a prayer rug;allahu akbar,your family announcesyour boyhoodandyour doom.”

“This is why we dance:If I speak, I’m dangerous.You open your mouth,raise your eyebrows.You point your fingers.This is why we dance:We have wounded feet but the rhythm remains,no matter the adjectives on my shoulders.This is why we dance:Because screaming isn’t free.Please tell me:Why is anger–even anger–a luxuryto me?”

“Birth lasts longer than death.In Palestine death is sudden,instant,constant,happens in between breaths.”

“I was born on the fiftieth anniversary of the Nakbato a mother who reaped olivesand figsand other Quranic verses,watteeni wazzaytoon.3My name: a bomb in a white room,a walking suspicionin an airport,choiceless politics.”

“Love Is Older Than “Israel”

“The gaze requires no words at all; it is an honest meeting.”

“eader, what does it
feel like to be safe? white?
how does it feel
to dance when you’re not
dancing away the ghost?
how does joy taste
when it’s not followed
by will come in the morning?
reader, it’s morning again
& somewhere, a mother
is pulling her hands
across her seed’s cold shoulders
kissing what’s left
of his face. where
is her joy? what’s she
to do with a child
who’ll spoil soon?

“hallelujah! today i rode
past five police cars
& i can tell you about it”

“a humbling at my knees. i let him record me, wanted to
watch me be monster, didn’t know he’d leave me
with vultures grazing my veins. me: dead lion who keeps
dying. him: flies who won’t leave my blood alone. the devil”

“- a love story -
he came/over
& then he left
but he stayed”

“there was a boy made of bad teeth & a boy made of stale bread & together they were a hot mouth making mush out of yeasty stones & in the end the one made of bad teeth walked away broken jawed, sick with hunger & the one made of stale bread walked away half of himself, his softness proved a lie & what remains left for unparticular birds.”

“love, stay
in me until our bodies forget
what divides us, until your hands
are my hands & your blood
is my blood & your name
is my name & his & his”

“you look in the mirror & see a man you refuse to love. small child sleeping near Clorox, dreaming of soap suds & milk, if no one has told you, you are beautiful & lovable & black & enough & so—you pretty you—am i.”