These are but wild and whirling words, my lord

Poet, painter, bookseller. Sleepy poetry, updates in April, July, and November. [poetry] [music]

[farewell-to-lorien]

Art by Winsor Kinkade, poem by Palestinian poet Marwan Makhoul.

[apoemaday]

Running Orders

by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

They call us now, before they drop the bombs. The phone rings and someone who knows my first name calls and says in perfect Arabic “This is David.” And in my stupor of sonic booms and glass-shattering symphonies still smashing around in my head I think, Do I know any Davids in Gaza? They call us now to say Run. You have 58 seconds from the end of this message. Your house is next. They think of it as some kind of war-time courtesy. It doesn’t matter that there is nowhere to run to. It means nothing that the borders are closed and your papers are worthless and mark you only for a life sentence in this prison by the sea and the alleyways are narrow and there are more human lives packed one against the other more than any other place on earth Just run. We aren’t trying to kill you. It doesn’t matter that you can’t call us back to tell us the people we claim to want aren’t in your house that there’s no one here except you and your children who were cheering for Argentina sharing the last loaf of bread for this week counting candles left in case the power goes out. It doesn’t matter that you have children. You live in the wrong place and now is your chance to run to nowhere. It doesn’t matter that 58 seconds isn’t long enough to find your wedding album or your son’s favorite blanket or your daughter’s almost completed college application or your shoes or to gather everyone in the house. It doesn’t matter what you had planned. It doesn’t matter who you are. Prove you’re human. Prove you stand on two legs. Run.

[two-bees-poetry]

[kiragecko]

[Image shows a poem with a space down the middle. The poem can be read in full, or either side can be read separately. The left side is titled, "lady macbeth", and the right side is titled, "macbeth".

Together they read,

i love you you have transformed me with strange tenderness and i am the monster that startles me in the mirror. and i have come full circle. i cannot allow this. this is me, myself as I was destined to be from my birth. so soft it hurts.

The lady macbeth side reads,

i love you with strange tenderness that startles me and i cannot allow myself to be so soft

The macbeth side reads,

you have transformed me and i am the monster in the mirror. i have come full circle. this. this is me, as I was destined from my birth. it hurts.

End ID.]

[lifeinpoetry]

Colonizers write about flowers. I tell you about children throwing rocks at Israeli tanks seconds before becoming daisies. I want to be like those poets who care about the moon. Palestinians don’t see the moon from jail cells and prisons. It’s so beautiful, the moon. They’re so beautiful, the flowers.

— Noor Hindi, from “Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People Are Dying,” DEAR GOD. DEAR BONES. DEAR YELLOW.

[sayruq]

[ibtisams-deactivated20240709]

x x

[havingapoemwithyou]

february & my love is in another state by José Olivarez

[sawasawako]

hold on a second man…

[mysharona1987]

[flutterfly67]

[Image Description: Poetry using Times New Roman font. Transcription:

I asked the children

What they want to be

When they grow up

And each began

To tell me their dream

Like so:

"If I grow up,"

End Transcription.

There's an emoji of the Palestine flag and the Arabic word حُلم (ḥulm, that translates to "dream") at the top right corner. End ID.]

[soracities]

Hamed Ashour, excerpt of "From Anas Al-Yaziji to his fiancé, Shaima Abu Al-Ouf, whose body he recovered after two days of searching", pub. Peripheries [ID'd]

[luntfontanne]

feminist_collages_nyc: Rest in Power Refaat Alareer

[girlfictions]

Refaat Alareer, an academic and lecturer at the Islamic University of Gaza, was martyred along with his family in a targeted assassination carried out by the Israeli occupation on December 7th, 2023. We must continue to stand against this genocide.

[luthienne]

[whirlsofwords]

DAY OFF

I look bruise-tired; my vision

screen-blind, but I can still see the cut

grapes below each eye. I’ve been sleeping

what I thought was enough, my alarm

the whine of a dog telling slightly

fibbed time. My morning hair will tell you,

I sleep deep. My screaming nephew knows

I won’t wake for anything. Every waking

is a war. I’m a glut—always wanting more.

And here, where

the hours are,

at last, my own:

I’m weary-weighted—

turned to stone.

[lifeinpoetry]

Dear God. Dear Bones. Dear Mother. Please, forgive me. I want to call in dead. Last week, there was a child in a yellow dress reading a poem. For minutes on end, I could not be indifferent to anything. Not the grass, dying yellow. Not the bombs, twisting limbs. Not the cages. Not the—

— Noor Hindi, from “Self-Interrogation,” DEAR GOD. DEAR BONES. DEAR YELLOW.

[whirlsofwords]

ANDIE,

you’re so close to my heart

that you’re indistinguishable;

one growing from the other

in a way that I hope is benign—

that I hope won’t kill me.

[whirlsofwords]

[whirlsofwords]

Award Ceremony for Palestinian Author at Frankfurt Book Fair Is Canceled

The prize’s organizers cited the Israel-Hamas war as the reason for stepping back from an event honoring a novel about the 1949 murder of a

In the wake of this Palestinian author’s award ceremony being canceled, Libro.fm has the book available for #free (Palestine) for a few more hours—check it out.

https://libro.fm/audiobooks/9781705297902-minor-detail