^{“I created this 37”× 29” topographic model of a ravine system, made entirely of repurposed materials, to generate conversation about how runoff from farmlands neighborhoods drains into the river, carrying the chemical waste of fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, and leaky equipment.” — Jenny Rieke}

lightning bugs 

loss and its mysteries 

bleached earth blue by moonlight 

all bodies warm and cold 

bed them down underground 

light as a, stiff as a... 

entombed in luminous insects 

flickering like the stars above

suffocate in jars on the table 

i have spent my whole 

hallucinated life boarding up this haunted house, a mudlark sifting the muck of memory and still i pack perpetually go through moving-on motions ghosts whine in my ears as i run slow to the next 

scene, pantomiming my 

same old nightmares 

they don't have lightning bugs here in the field where i lay i wake at a feather's touch sweating like some sort of feral animal, to be wary of rest with grim guarantees

—Fin

Lucid Dreams

Our conversation

I am the most charming character you will ever meet

In the conversations I make of our past interactions

I season them in my mind, and taste them in my mouth

Roll them over and over until they are smooth and shiny

If I could feed you these gems, these perfect pearls,

You would see me truly, and I know you would love me

As we have our conversation in my cast-back mind,

My body curled recklessly around the empty sphere of you

—Sara Quinn

My Enemies Defeated Me / For Nothing

My enemies defeated me, led me downhill,
executed my horse, and made me watch.
My enemies defeated me, sold my mats, rugs,
and colored rosaries at the bazaar
to merchants and traders in shadows.
In the dark my friends betrayed me.
My children saw the hyena laugh outside our window.
At the tavern the wheat seller tricked me,
sold me wine that I could tell was spiked
when I held my glass to candlelight.
His plump wife kept filling my glass,
kept bending behind the barrels.
Then her scoundrel husband
steadied my wobbling to the room upstairs,
and the tax collectors rushed straight to my place,
opened the stable gates, let the mule, calves
and bull out, and mixed my flour with salt.
The dogs I’d fed from my plate fled,
left their barks on thorns and cactus,
and in my neighbor’s envy
and his two wolfish daughters.
For nothing I ploughed thirty years,
fed strangers who knocked at my door,
fed tax collectors, for nothing
I forgave my neighbors
their larcenies and snitching.
For nothing I carried water to their homes,
hay to their mules, wine to their tables, called them
by their clumsy family names, and meditated
under the branches of their foolish trees.
For nothing I left a lantern down the slope,
a covered bowl of milk
with the fat on top
at my doorstep.

— Ghassan Zaqtan

October 26, 2021
Zakariya, Beit Jala, Ramallah

Translated by Fady Joudah.
Read more at:
thebaffler.com/logical-revolts/poems-from-palestine