DEAR LANGUAGE OF OPPORTUNITY,
You, with your tongue
against the backs of teeth.
You, of ahhhhhhh,
of sssssssss.
Let me ask you this:
which one of us the drum’s
old skin & which
the stick? You know
why I’m asking.
You’ve been bargaining again.
Death was spreading its fungus
on a fig; eating tomorrow’s honey.
Don’t say you did what you could.
Don’t give me lessons on the wasp
that burrows into the center, losing her wings.
A truck with body bags came in.
People took what they needed.
What did they need?
They needed a cup of flour.
They needed an iron pill.
But instead, you were—where?
whose?
The people counted:
“One.”
“One.”
“One.”
Oh Language, what
hush you made below.
Poem Note: the lines, “One.” /“One.” / “ One.” are a reference to these lines from Pádraig Ó Tuama: “…so I count //one life / one life / one life / one life / one life // because each time / is the first time / that life / has been taken.”
First published by Ask the Night for a Dream: Palestinian Writing from the Diaspora (Palestine Writes Press)
THE CLOCK MEN
All day, the talk is lint.
Committees meet and look at their calendars.
The carpet hardly moves.
The lobby doesn’t even smell of corpses.
It’s Monday here.
There’s a salad bar here.
In Rafah, a wall is blown off by somebody’s son.
He’s gotten his life back on track now.
His father doesn’t cry outside his door anymore.
A tiny nozzle mists the lettuce.
The clock on each laptop jogs on its treadmill.
At 12:31, the meeting resumes.
No one looks at the sky anymore.
Looking has gotten risky.
Once I looked at a birthday cake
and saw a president’s face.
It was burning there
next to a piece of my cousin’s bedroom.
There were no balloons but when I looked up I saw a cloud inflating—round and swollen,
dark around the edges, bleeding through with light, pulling more and more filament into her
breasts, bright powdery hearts and fleshy grays folding into her, and still more, dense fast
moving bars and flat brown sheets that smothered the sun curling into her mass, until she
was heaving, large, now straddling the earth, bearing down–
that day, we sang an old song
and ate cake with our hands
until we had to leave
the world we knew behind.
But there were some who stayed, gripping their keyboards
even as gales lifted the roof off their box, typing:
Fill out this meeting poll today!
You must choose between 2:05 and 2:08!
First published by Social Text: https://socialtextjournal.org/periscope_article/the-clock-men/
GRANT PROPOSAL FOR YOUR EMERGENCY
- Objective: To hold my beloved’s hand by the sea.
- Please describe your project in as much detail as possible:
My hair will fly into my lover’s mouth
and we will smile until the facial muscles
can pull upwards no more. Then, we will enter the sea.
Swill every blue tincture.
- What is the nature of your emergency?
What is the nature of your fund?
- Projected outcomes:
- My lover’s terrible drawing of the sea
- A slowly emptied pot of mahshi
- One photograph of my beloved’s back entering the sea, palms raised
as though to say, It’s not too cold
- What investments will your project require?
For my beloved’s hand to be pulled out of a witness’ testimony
and returned to me. The past to not be a bleeding
visitor who asks why the ambulance never arrives.
- Proposed budget:
| Description of Item | Estimated Cost |
| To lean on my lover’s shoulder and point at jumping fish | |
| To ask, Do you see there, where the sea turns peacock? | |
| To watch four children run on the shoreline without, without….. | |
| To fall asleep on the sand, wrapped in my mother’s turquoise shawl | |
| To write our firstborn’s initials on each other’s wrists | |
| To dip bread in sesame and share it with pigeons | |
| To say, Let’s grow old as this neon sky | |
| Total | I refuse to quantify |
- Please provide a schedule of deliverables:
And you can find the report of what we did tied to a kite
First published by Adi Magazine: https://adimagazine.com/articles/two-poems-wathington/
