War Machines Dress Up as Drag Queens

By Mohammed El-Kurd

after Audre Lorde

There are many roots.

War machines are coin-operated arcade games,

and your penny sprays and juvenile plays

are just as greedy as a bulldozer's mouth

chewing life into debris for me to dish-wash and make poetry of.

War machines wear lipstick, carry bedazzled purses, and wave

hello how are you?

vogue on said debris / pink faucets. If you ignore the rubble,

this is a haven––its earth is flesh, brown and uncounted.

War machines are American-made, and they are never thirsty / rivers in their throats.

American water is brown and dirtied and children famished,

cracked, caged in cages, / in uneducated education.

Surf their boats in drought. Their knuckles stiff, cold is this verse.

I sit here wondering:

Which me will survive bulldozers undoing God?

Which me will soak their hands in these wells?

Which me will console the dead's loved ones with prevention, not

mourning,

bottle our Jordan River to smack American thirst,

Water stolen or neglected.

Which me will survive all these liberations?

The Passport

Mahmoud Darwish

They did not recognize me in the shadows

That suck away my colour in this Passport

And to them my wound was an exhibit

For a tourist who loves to collect photographs

They did not recognize me,

Ah... Don't leave

The palm of my hand without the sun

Because the trees recognize me

All the songs of the rain recognize me

Don't leave me pale like the moon!

All the birds that followed my palm

To the door of the distant airport

All the wheat fields

All the prisons

All the white tombstones

All the barbed boundaries

All the waving handkerchiefs

All the eyes

were with me,

But they dropped them from my passport

Stripped of my name and identity?

On a soil I nourished with my own hands?

Today Jacob cried out

Filling the sky:

Don't make an example of me again!

Oh, gentlemen, Prophets,

Don't ask the trees for their names

Don't ask the valleys who their mother is From my forehead bursts the sword of light

And from my hand springs the water of the river

So take away my passport!

Our Loneliless

Hiba Abu Nada

يا وحدنا

ربح اجلميع حروبهم

ًايوُتُركت أنت أمام وحدك عار

ال شعر يا درويش

سوف يعيد ما خسر الوحيد وما فقد

يا وحدنا

هذا زمان جاهلي آخرs

ُعن الذي يف احلرب فرقنا بهل

ك احتدُتوعلى جناز

يا وحدنا

األرض سوق حرة

وبالدك الكبرى مزاد معتمد

يا وحدنا

هذا زمان جاهلي

لن يساندنا أحد

يا وحدنا

فامسح

قصائدك القدمية واجلديدة

والبكاء

وشدي حيلك يا بلد

Translated by Salma Harland

How alone it was,

our loneliness,

when they won their wars.

Only you were left behind,

naked,

before this loneliness.

Darwish,

ُno poetry could ever bring it back:

what the lonely one has lost.

It’s another age of ignorance,

our loneliness.

Damned be that which divided us

then stands united

at your funeral.

Now your land is auctioned

and the world’s

a free market.

It’s a barbaric era,

our loneliness,

one when none will stand up for us.

So, my country, wipe away your poems,

the old and the new,

and your tears,

and pull yourself together.

If I Must Die

Refaat Al-Areer

If I must die,

you must live

to tell my story

to sell my thigs

to buy a piece of cloth

and some strings,

(make it white with a long tail)

so that a child, somewhere in Gaza

while looking heaven in the eye

awaiting his dad who left in a blaze ––

and bid no one farewell

not even to his flesh

not even to himself ––

sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above

and thinks for a moment an angel is there

bringing back love

If I must die

let it bring hope

let it be a tale.

Enough for Me

Fadwa Tuqan

Enough for Me

Enough for me to die on her earth

be buried in her

to melt and vanish into her soil

then sprout forth as a flower

played with by a child from my country.

Enough for me to remain

in my country’s embrace

to be in her close as a handful of dust

a sprig of grass

a flower.