Astronauts are also Mortal 29 Mar 3:47 PM (4 days ago)
Gagarin first man in space but also the thirteenth
the sun god Ra and murderous Isis
Elijah and Jesus and you
Mohammad hovering above Jerusalem
Refusing to enter Paradise but unclothed
And reduced to a heap of ashes
You prophet Elijah carried by your horses
Burning close to the sun
All of your cosmonauts carried by our dreams
Floating above sleep
All of you pioneers of that space
Baalbeck 29 Mar 3:21 PM (4 days ago)
21
When no one is waiting for us
any longer, there’s
death,
so faithful.
22
Broken souls are not anonymous,
no more than the geometry
reserved for my naked feet.
23
There are moments when
the past ceases to be a form
of the present.
Rain and tears
Look alike.
24
Syria has always been the mother
of chaos. A land parallel to
all the others. In the epiphany
At 2 PM in the Afternoon 29 Mar 3:18 PM (4 days ago)
the sun came out at night
to go for a stroll and the divine crossed
the room. the windows
opened
writing comes from a dialogue
with time: it’s made
of a mirror in which thought
is stripped and no longer knows
itself
in Palermo men are as
strictly trained as horses; or
else they have the shining violence of
flowers
*
it’s more bearable to think of
death than of love
When I Bit into the Plum the Ants Flooded Out 25 Jul 2024 10:43 AM (8 months ago)
I’ll dress myself cheap as a red candle. I’ll keep my hair long for you to yank. Slink myself in black. Silk panties. Bangles as bright as India. This body is yours more than mine. The trees are broken into temples, one slow noose to the next. My breasts smell like cigars and perspiration, you have sparrowed into my arteries: heartbeat, dial tone.
Aleppo 25 Jul 2024 10:39 AM (8 months ago)
I talk back to the videos. Someone ate paper. Someone isn’t eating anymore.
Mornings like this, I wish I never loved anyone. What is it to be a lucky city, a row of white houses strung with Christmas lights.
There is no minute
A fortuneteller told me I’d marry one of Aleppo’s sons. That was seven years ago.
to spare.
Truth 25 Jul 2024 10:36 AM (8 months ago)
I’m allergic to hair dye and silver. Of the natives,
I love the Aztecs most of all, the way they lit fires
in the gouged chests of men to keep the world spinning.
I’ve seen women eat cotton balls so they wouldn’t eat bread
I will never be as beautiful as the night I danced in a garage,
anorexic, decked in black boots, black sweater, black jeans,
Light Ghazal 25 Jul 2024 10:32 AM (8 months ago)
I’m terrible at parties, secrets, and money. I want my stars sexy: fast light
that’s prophetic. No nonsense about physics, refraction, past light.
Even in Barcelona, I can’t turn a bike. I let you change my mind: free will
and wet hair. One night, I let you pour white wine. I drink its aghast light.
Happy now? We’re both like this—full of risk and nowhere to put it.
Naturalized 25 Jul 2024 10:30 AM (8 months ago)
Can I pull the land from me like a cork?
I leak all over brunch. My father never learned to swim.
I’ve already said too much.
Look, the marigolds are coming in. Look, the cuties
are watching Vice again. Gloss and soundbites.
They like to understand. They like to play devil’s advocate.
My father plays soccer. It’s so hot in Gaza.
No place for a child’s braid. Under
The Interviewer Wants to Know about Fashion 25 Jul 2024 10:28 AM (8 months ago)
“They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.”
—Ayelet Shaked
Think of all the calla lilies.
Think of all the words that rhyme with calla.
Isn’t it a miracle that they come back?
The flowers. The dead. I watch a woman
bury her child. How? I lost a fetus
and couldn’t eat breakfast for a week.
Returning of Issue 23 Jul 2024 11:14 AM (8 months ago)
Tomorrow will be your last day here. Someone is speaking:
A familiar voice, speaking again at all of us.
And beyond the windows— it is inside now, and autumn—
On a wind growing daily harsher, small things to the earth
Are turning and whirling, small. Tomorrow will be
Your last day here,
But not we hope for always. You cannot see through the windows
The Auction Sale 23 Jul 2024 11:14 AM (8 months ago)
Within the great grey flapping tent
The damp crowd stood or stamped about;
And some came in, and some went out
To drink the moist November air;
None fainted, though a few looked spent
And eyed some empty unbought chair.
It was getting on. And all had meant
Not to go home with empty hands
But full of gain, at little cost,
Of mirror, vase, or vinaigrette.
Yet often, after certain sales,
The Door and the Window 23 Jul 2024 11:14 AM (8 months ago)
My love, you are timely come, let me lie by your heart.
For waking in the dark this morning, I woke to that mystery,
Which we can all wake to, at some dark time or another:
Waking to find the room not as I thought it was,
But the window further away, and the door in another direction.
This was not home, and you were far away
Sailor's Harbor 23 Jul 2024 11:14 AM (8 months ago)
My thoughts, like sailors becalmed in Cape Town harbor,
Await your return, like a favorable wind, or like
New tackle for the voyage, without which it is useless starting.
We watch the sea daily, finish our daily tasks
By ten in the morning, and with the day to waste,
Wander through the suburbs, with quiet thoughts of the brothels,
And sometimes thoughts of the churches.
Movement of Bodies 23 Jul 2024 11:14 AM (8 months ago)
Those of you that have got through the rest, I am going to rapidly
Devote a little time to showing you, those that can master it,
A few ideas about tactics, which must not be confused
With what we call strategy. Tactics is merely
The mechanical movement of bodies, and that is what we mean by it.
Or perhaps I should say: by them.
Strategy, to be quite frank, you will have no hand in.
Complaint for Absolute Divorce 23 Jul 2024 10:56 AM (8 months ago)
A little something to endorse:
Download attachment, print and sign
Complaint for Absolute Divorce,
the lawyer wrote with casual force.
Yet why complain? The suit was mine.
A little something to endorse
“Complaint”: sheer poetry, of course,
more lofty than Lament or Whine.
Complaint for Absolute Divorce:
so well-phrased, who could feel remorse?