The Child’s Hands, Feet, and Memory: Two Poems About Palestine
Poets Devorah Main and Khadija Muhaisen salute Palestinian kids
By Devorah Main
Do you bear in mind a contract?
Your infant’s hand reaches out
Your father’s huge reassuring hand
I used to be amazed at how huge it was in comparison with it
To your delicate vine fingers?
Do you bear in mind making
Fingers and palms within the church and steeple
After which open to see all individuals?
Do you bear in mind the drawing?
Eyes and mouths on fingers
Creating foolish finger individuals?
Thumb tucked round
The index finger makes the mouth
Opening and shutting –
Foolish childhood video games
And laughter creeps over our our bodies
Dissolve in air
And it reappears
Like a tickling chortle
Finger wiggle.
Keep in mind?
He would not wish to be one of many lacking ones
Or kill somebody who’s unable to establish him
The little woman wrote inside
Coronary heart-shaped palm between hearts
And the lifeline in elegant Arabic calligraphy
“If my hand survives
“That’s my identify” earlier than she was killed.
These children haven’t got it
Numbers burned into their arms
However many wrote themselves
Names, knowledge and ID numbers.
Reveals folded pants legs
The brothers engraved studying the legs
Ahmed Nateel
Joan Nettle
Rahban Netil.
Did the eldest write it to his youthful brothers?
Or maybe it was written by a trembling mom
Or a father writing whereas wiping his tears?
Now they lie subsequent to one another
Smooth brown seedlings reduce
Earlier than they’ll bear fruit.
It appeared like the entire household
They have been assassinated whereas he killed them
Name the purge
Reduce the grass
The ultimate, simply answer
Are you sufficiently old to recollect being a toddler?
Sufficiently old to recollect rising up
Possibly you even bear in mind being previous
They aren’t
Their our bodies
Reflecting recollections they may by no means have
One of many kids wrote on her arm
“No, I can’t die”
Are you continue to alive?
Devorah the Nice
October 26, 2023
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Devora Main He’s San Francisco’s Third Poet Laureate, an award-winning poet and fiction author, artistic nonfiction author, performer, editor, and professor of poetry at California School of the Arts, in addition to former poet-in-residence on the Nice Arts Museums of San Francisco. Francisco. May be accessed at Data@devorahmajor.com.
By Khadija Muhinin
You see my father, carrying me to items,
Reduce from me, and my identify is within the hearts,
It is etched into the pores and skin however you will not really feel it
Equal to you, this appears unclear.
What does it take to see it,
We’re yours and you’re we?
How a lot, oh, how a lot should we mourn?
And to make you understand, for us, hearts should yearn
To relaxation within the arms of our very candy mom,
The heat of her embrace the place all hearts meet.
How a lot is sufficient? Inform me the associated fee
The morgues are full, a misplaced world,
The ice cream truck just isn’t what it appears,
Full of what is left of me, not childhood desires.
What number of are sufficient?
We’re not simply numbers, we’re lives that matter,
However the world has change into chilly, and hearts are breaking,
In a sea of tears we scream silently
Do not you see it is not only a dream?
How a lot is sufficient? Inform me the associated fee
The morgues are full, a misplaced world,
The ice cream truck just isn’t what it appears,
Full of what is left of me, not childhood desires.
What number of are sufficient?
What you do not see, what you do not know,
Our divine blood runs by our veins.
Our limbs, O pious one, bear the load of ache,
Our holy names, engraved just like the chorus of prayer.
On our limbs, we write our names,
To relaxation beneath the olive bushes, within the quiet evening.
The place the land remembers and by no means forgets,
We’re trapped in her womb, in her candy regret.
We are going to stay endlessly within the rivers, mountains and bushes,
Within the coronary heart of our homeland, the place the world nonetheless sees,
Witness to the ugliness of man and his merciless hand,
But additionally the resilience of the Holy Land.
How a lot is sufficient, we’re right here to say,
In our recollections, we’ll gentle the best way,
To vary the world, to make it proper,
In unity we’ll shine brightly.
What number of are sufficient?
Khadija Muheisen is a senior fellow on the Heart for Writing and Scholarship. She is a doctoral pupil in girls’s spirituality and philosophy.
