Galilee

1

dear ______ can you meet me at the shawarma stand / just beyond the shrapnel radius
Do you still have that scar where the coffee that morning / boiled over & burned your hand
There’s a gate in the wall that only opens / in moonlight Do you remember where it is
If I don’t hear before your permit expires / I’ll know they’re taking your village again

Where the olives they cut come to plot return / Where the dead village dances when no one’s looking
Do you still have that scar at the edge of your lip / from that first night you learned what a soldier is
dear ______ I’ve forgotten you / This note & the dozens before stand as proof
When I come we’ll spread this cloth in the graveyard / rubble where our bed used to be

 Wish me darkness I’m stealing some / from the little curve at the moon’s waist
The salt tracks on the nets hung to dry / remind me of your kisses dueling sorrow all night
A ghost with your accent & fragrance & passport / kissed me in my dream until morning
Hello Yes We were disconnected / Imperium calling occupied Galilee

2

I don’t miss you Not at dawn or at night / It’s not on the list of permitted gestures
I’ve forgotten you All your names have been / erased as per colonial custom
Not dreaming of you is another version / of dreaming of you as per new regulations
Your smell Your taste Your prohibited / touch Your tears These mean nothing to me

 Why am I not the latch of a weapon / to unlock the messages from your side & disperse them
Why am I not a key Not one / of a thousand keys to the checkpoint gate
Why am I not the rungs of the ladder / to the watchtower window or is it a lighthouse
Why am I not a map without territories / An atlas of donkey trails & doves’ nests

If I were to miss you it would be / when someone’s laugh laces defeat with beginnings
If I were to promise myself to you / it would be as they open the prison door
If I were to remember you it would be / as incitement & you know where that leads us
If I were to come to you it would be / by that light you saw sweeping the camp last night

3

Go ahead Hide my name if you want to / The moon & I will still hear what you’re thinking
Package received Ripped blanket we lay on / Box of shards of glasses that held wine
As if we were friends As if we were strangers / Go fuck yourself You lied to me
I’m writing on seeds stolen from your garden / & I’ll scatter them for the sparrows when I’m done

Please find enclosed A broken harmonica / The bracelets we made from kisses & shrine dust
Did the desert make you to teach me thirst / Fuck the radiant beams from thy holy face
Have you taken the collaborator’s pledges again / To accompany the detachments To forget your own eyes
The moon’s bending her aching back / on her errand & yours of breaking me

I’m deleting that song you love Sorry I Couldn’t / Hear You I Was Listening To The Previous Century
I’m deleting those songs you love Kissing Your Ankles / Quarrel Between Donkeys / My Spare Shirt Made of Rain
I’m forgetting the name of the beach where you almost / convinced me I was born yesterday
This map I stole shows the black site for lovers / built on the ruins of the lovers’ gate

4

On your side of the wall I hear there are oranges / But it’s been so long I can’t remember
On your side I hear unoccupied planes / keep you sleepless Staring from eyes in their wings
On your side there used to be a well / where my aunts passed messages Is it still there
The eyed wings watch here too Where we pretend / we forget what a camp is

The restricted road where you live used to run / past my mother’s occupied kitchen
I live on the road called Sheep Skin / Wrapped Around Whose Hidden Shoulders
The matrix of civilization over / the matrix of theft & the matrix of ruin
The taste of stolen recipes The stolen / hill’s shoulder of stolen thyme & mint

The soldier with your accent Flecks of phosphorous / burning in the unwritten vowels
My passport with the seal of a watchtower / stamped using burned blood for ink
Your language waking the babies screaming / Your star made a flare to light the way to destruction
The vowel in your erased village’s name / low every morning in the coffee pot’s throat

5

The scar on one wrist from the shackle made / of what you forgot to forget to tell me
The marks on your palms from the hours of waiting / for the new edition of your ghetto i.d.
Your glance slipping away from mine / as your face becomes a mask Then an absence
Your whispers & the smell of your shirt / crowding the sink when I wash my clothes

The hardnesses required to leave me / Your nails Your fear Your knees Your knuckles
The way the cup of my courage spilled / before I’d finished rinsing your hair
Your body’s nightmare sweetness Your way / with the wounds of imperial jurisdiction
That one night the restrictions permitted/ Half a loaf & no fish made into feast

 Your fingers accustomed to plenty tearing / a scrap of bread for a drop of oil
Your eyes accustomed to affliction / scanned laughing in the police report
Did you love me Or did we dream each other / Is it still there The place where we met
Is it a dream or is it a memory / The salt smell of a free place

6

Crushed chickpeas crushed against crushed garlic / & mixed with the paste of crushed sesame seeds
After hours of artillery the search for pits / to make graves Pits to make ovens for bread
Cut tomatoes & cut onions laced / with the ghost of the oil from the cut olive trees
A plate of honey filmed with the dust / of the razing of every house on your street

 My fingerprints dipped in lebneh & za’atar / smearing the police station binders
The grapes on my side asking their ancestors / the whereabouts of your ancestors’ hands
The burned bread in my mouth after carrying / someone’s dead child wrapped in a blanket
The crowd of murdered ghetto children edging / closer all silent imperial night

How I held out my hands from my side & you looked / as if I were stripping you in     front of your neighbors
How you held out your hands & I could see / bits of my soul in the beds of your nails
I’ve taught myself to forget how to miss you / I’m not still standing there making that gesture
How you held out your hands I thought of as possible / & I told you not to wait & turned away

7

The Special Night Squads were here again / breaking the doors & cutting the pillows
When we walked in the camp moonlight I could see / the holes cut between living rooms to march through
They’re taking the firstborn of Galilee again / but gradually So no one will notice
& after the artillery you showed me / the one child in the one chair in the one house saved

 Can you hear the songs the night wind plays / on the buried bones of the extinguished animals
They say on the other side there’s nothing / but dancing but hard to see that from here
The moon’s lost names & the remnant songs / from the time before the settlements
Over there Before the castle garrisons / had found all these ways to destroy a tent

Their chainsaws smeared with the old matrix / Something like how you taste where you’re softest
How we watched the storm petrels with no land to light on / walk on water in order to eat
Is that what we’re both faithful to / The integrity of wandering
The creole of the sound of your eyelashes mixed / with the sound of a rooster just before we had to leave

8

Someone’s boiling water in the ruins for a shower / Someone else is collecting dead horses
Did you see that crooked moon leaning to pull / the morning star closer through the smoke
After such a long night’s work / the gunners must be tired we’re hoping
The gunner holding his breath to line up / his sight on three boys running on a beach

 Without your touch your people’s hate eats me / like the tank shells gnawing the neighborhoods
Without the sound of your voice heresy / becomes unthinkable & I do as I’m told
What were streets here are lines of orphan footprints / weaving through tangles of rebar & cordite
The streets here paved with colonial terror / What if what I’ve done could happen to me

We found one of their development plans In which / the mission is accomplished & the land is empty
You told me how the ashy houses after / look like they’re trying to breathe
I can’t stop seeing a white dove walking / on the back of someone sprawled across a threshold
I’m remembering your list of demands Someone / to eat with Someone to stay awake with you 

9

They’re cutting the water The kids are asking about it / Why do they like to undo things one said
Because your enemy wants to take you / & you’re only supposed to be taken by your father
They’re thirsty They stand around the bombed cistern / like the first calves roped away from their mother
It’s a long plan isn’t it Their wild mother / roped so they could take her milk

In their eyes you can see the striations of fury / like veins in rocks from a long time ago
They’re playing soldier under my window / Children named after metal & stone
This is a school Broken bits of blackboard / This is a house Broken sinks & mortar
They learn it in all the languages but yours / What is your name Where do you live

The last demolition was led by a captain / occupying where a living boy used to be
There’s a school where we teach our children to kill / Is there one over there to teach dying
We name ours for prophets & angels Who see / the house up ahead made of music & morning
Under my window they’re gagging each other / Playing near the well where your aunts used to live

10

Is it Friday Is today the day you pretend / we were never illegal together for a minute
The authorized Haifa falcons are chasing / the sans-papiers petrels over the waves
Is it true there are snipers in the lighthouses now / scanning the tired diaspora-drunk harbor
My yearslong embrace of someone else’s city / One hand over my mouth until you moved it to kiss me

Nazareth won’t look at us anymore / There’s a bounty office that collects our absences
In the souk by the oud shop as the market was closing / The first place I heard your name
If I hadn’t forgotten you I would remember / your eyes’ quarrel between desire & compliance
The divided birds Migrant Resident Vagrant / still know their way to the inland sea 

The lake police monitor the bits of ocean / seeping up from the underground networks
The boy they took yesterday was shouting something / but no one could hear what he was saying
My cousin says you can still fish there / & they only shoot on special occasions
It’s written on all the gates now In code / To Destroy Is To Build To Build Is To 

11

When I woke up I’d raised one hand / to defend myself against the charges
It’s a moveable camp now It crosses borders / to escape the tribunals & replicate anywhere
Remember when the winter festivals / celebrated the earth that seemed dying but wasn’t
Yes Hard to hear through canned festival laughter / but now it’s the other way around

They told me to smear the doorposts & I couldn’t / wash it out or put down the bucket
Was that where those three girls lived with their mother / With prices from Lockheed on their heads
And a boy tied with his arms apart / He couldn’t breathe Something was wrong with his shoulders
His name was Zakaria Sorry/ for all the bodies clogging up your dreams

We will build a new Jerusalem someone said / Right this way Your bones will make the cement
Little bits of your people’s consent / stay in the trees after the soldiers go
& two choices of passport One with a flag / One an envelope of a burned village’s ashes
Their favorite time to take someone / is when almost everyone is asleep

12

Can you meet me where your grandmothers / would have recognized the carts on the old Gaza road
Where your grandfathers patched the boat that fed them / with a dozen kinds of cheap wood
Where you sent the contraband candles & matches / Where your sister came to tell me you’d been wounded
Where you asked me not to ask you because it was raining / little bits of phosphorous & lead

Where the carpenters tap the wall like jewelers / to break it along its buried facets
Where the road of the knowledge of weapons crosses / the road of the knowledge of guitars
Where you told me my gag was slipping & adjusted it / Where you passed as if you didn’t know me
Where you said See you tomorrow by where / they were making soup near the last row of tents

In our temple Faithful to the lovers’ coffee / & bread & honey & desert brooks
Where your tears are from laughing Where your sore wrists rest / Where the gates of your hips frame an unpoliced garden
Where the new physics permitted walking on water / once the old compacts had been broken
At the atlas crossroads Where you don’t miss me / Where you’re holding out your hands (W)here