I hope you enjoy this brief list of poems by Palestinian poets.
and names sliced open, reborn in disfigured repetition—
sang three hundred years of returning
Language is merely the placeholder
for what the LAND has always known
We are tired of ourselves in this endless night,
and tired of our mothers clinging to what’s left of us,
tired of this rock we carry on our backs,
this eternal curse.
From abyss to abyss, we carry it,
from death to death,
and we never arrive.
Their eyes will sear holes in the night sky. Remember this when you look at the stars:
that it is the burning eyes of Gaza’s children that hold your gaze
It began with a need to be seen. Now
you’ve made a garden in the seeing of
me.
Who Midased the touch golden? Who
echoed
the body a dis-remembrance? Was it me?
We will keep you alive
in our longing, in our breath.
We will sing with you, together
in a space of music, even if you never
sang in life. Love finds a way.
It is not linear, with a destination,
a closure. Love starts over and over,
circling back to the source,
I flit
from gleaming river
to glistening sea,
from all that we
to all that me
In 5th grade, I visit the school library.
On one wall next to the door, a poster claims
“If you read books, you live more than one life.”
Now I’m thirty and whenever I look at faces
around me, old or young, on the foreheads I read:
If you live in Gaza, you die several times.
from “Palestine Sunbird” - Deema K. Shehabi
Hot so say your answer pulled a song of our lost country from my throat?
from “Occupation” - Jessica Abughattas
…I am a cavity for potential, a vial
of future substance. Sustenances. Sentences
from “The State of—“ - Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
Noun gerund of the verb (to leave)
An exodus, a detachment
A father has gone in search of bread
A baker has gone in search of flour
A mother has gone in search of a cloud
A people have gone
A world in each of them
from “Against Content Warnings” - Sara Abou Rashed
I refuse to give
my horror
the intimacy
of a name.
**You can read all these poems here.
Watch Hala Alyan reading her poem “When They Say Pledge Allegiance, I Say”
An Excerpt From: ‘I Saw, Father, What You Saw’ - Ahlam Bsharat
Whenever I saw the life line
An etch across the palm of my hand
I said with a laugh:
We are a people who live long.
Yes, my father lived a hundred years.
From “This Bread Was Born, This Bread Was Killed” - Basman Aldirawi
The newborn breads breathe,
yet dust chokes the air,
searing gases penetrate
their thin, fragile crusts.
From “Not Just Passing” - Hiba Abu Nada
O little light in me, don’t die,
even if all the galaxies of the world
close in.
O little light in me, say:
Enter my heart in peace.
All of you, come in!
Continue
fighting for a free Palestine!
Palestine will be free!