Gaza has become a funeral home, 
but there are no seats, 
no mourners, no bodies. 
In the caskets are nothing but 
what remained of the dead’s clothes, 
and on the crumbling walls are clocks 
that have not moved for fourteen months.

Terrified past panic, strict lines collapsed,

their shredded flesh more wound than flesh,

they play dead in a ditch, but won’t give up



their shrouds, which have grown on them.

Then the angels come, oiling eye sockets, joints,

and stuffing everyone’s armpits, left or right,



with an item they failed to desecrate in life.

This way, something saved remains warm,



and God’s hands don’t get cold, as He sorts

the good ones from the ones who’ve spoiled.

My mother is a fish, Vardaman repeats, in Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, as his family builds his dying mother’s coffin. My favorite novel in college. It comes back now. On the beach on my pink bike wearing my mother’s too tight bathing suit I ride as fast as I can past dead fish after dead fish, choked by the algae. Deprived of oxygen, they must have thrown their bodies gasping on the sand. Like my mother, I think, unable to breathe, dying, and then am aghast at my own terrible metaphor, which she would hate. If I waded out in the water, color of rust, color of blood, if I let the water close over my head, would that lessen the distance between us?

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
    If this be error, and upon me prov’d,
    I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.

It’s dusk on a Tuesday in June. A hot wind

       bears down and east. In my room, a stranger’s

hairclip lies like a gilded insect beside the sink.

       Hours later, it’s still dusk; it will be dusk all night.

Last month, I cut the masking tape from a box my mother left

       my sister and me. On the lid, she wrote, Life is hard, not

unbeatable. If I can do it, darlings, so can you. 2 am. A rosy dark

       dusting the window, the heat a ladder into sleep.

The silence is broken: into the nature 

  My soul sails out, 

Carrying the song of life on his brow,

   To meet the flowers and birds.

When my heart returns in the solitude, 

   She is very sad,

Looking back on the dead passions

  Lying on Love’s ruin. 

I am like a leaf

   Hanging over hope and despair, 

Which trembles and joins 

  The world’s imagination and ghost. 

I went down to the river,
I set down on the bank.
I tried to think but couldn't,
So I jumped in and sank.

I came up once and hollered!
I came up twice and cried!
If that water hadn't a-been so cold
I might've sunk and died.

     But it was      Cold in that water!      It was cold!

I took the elevator
Sixteen floors above the ground.
I thought about my baby
And thought I would jump down.

I stood there and I hollered!
I stood there and I cried!
If it hadn't a-been so high
I might've jumped and died.

     But it was      High up there!      It was high!

So since I'm still here livin',
I guess I will live on.
I could've died for love—
But for livin' I was born

Though you may hear me holler,
And you may see me cry—
I'll be dogged, sweet baby,
If you gonna see me die.

     Life is fine!      Fine as wine!      Life is fine!

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,

And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,

Stealing my breath of life, I will confess

I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!

Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,

Giving me strength erect against her hate.

Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.

Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,

I stand within her walls with not a shred

Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.

Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,

And see her might and granite wonders there,

Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand,

Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

(“Three bills known as the Thompson-Bewley cannery bills have been advanced to third reading in the Senate and Assembly at Albany. One permits the canners to work their employés seven days a week, a second allows them to work women after 9 p.m. and a third removes every restriction upon the hours of labor of women and minors.”—Zenas L. Potter, former chief cannery investigator for New York State Factory Investigating Commission.)

Let us not to an unrestricted day

Impediments admit. Work is not work

To our employés, but a merry play;

They do not ask the law’s excuse to shirk.

Ah, no, the canning season is at hand,

When summer scents are on the air distilled,

When golden fruits are ripening in the land,

And silvery tins are gaping to be filled.

Now to the cannery with jocund mien

Before the dawn come women, girls and boys,

Whose weekly hours (a hundred and nineteen)

Seem all too short for their industrious joys.

If this be error and be proved, alas

The Thompson-Bewley bills may fail to pass!

An eye from the Creator,
a fire, bright, setting slowly
over the cusp of the “new world,”

kissing the Old World, softly
to sleep, it is the kissing that is soft,
not the sleeping.

Under the light of that unwanted dawn there is
a warrior still left standing, we
war-journey them

          to the battle and back,
                     to the battle and back,
                                to the battle and back,

radiance, felt through the
water that flows blue but runs red,
around and around

that quickly setting sun,

around and around
a circle, there are
songs for the way our warriors
used to honorably drift away

We used to die in battle
but today they ring out
— “whatchu tryna tell me?”
while we slosh a bottle around,
we laugh about how we are singing

Songs from the wrong eagles,
our war journey is through the hills
with the windows down

In a red ford with
the tribal tag torn
and a car battery in the front seat

We are nurtured,
Remembered,
by the birds who fly
around and around

while we hit our hands
on the hoods of clunkers
and when it stops being sacred,

We laugh,
We funk #49,
here we live,
here we are live.

We laugh,
my warrior, we aren’t
the warriors, of anything
like that, anymore.

and you used to be The Richard Bey Show 
and my sister’s spaghetti. Under a friar plum tree, 
a simplified reading of “The Argonautica.”
You kept me full and entertained. I was that kind 
of round child. Gorging on what was left over. 
I didn’t want a real burden, my own ship or story. 
I didn’t want to go on ahead. I didn’t want to 
have to reverse into you. Into your apparatus. 
I never wanted nostalgia. We used to know each other,
remember? Dry. Humid. Dry. Humid. 
Not. Humid. Dry. Humid. Dry. Humid. Dry.
Why did we have to pry open our patch of dirt? 
Why couldn’t you always be acid wash
or those I CAN’T DRIVE 55 posters at the swap meet 
or sunglasses. I never wanted to lay questions around 
you. What if he takes another this year? What if 
he’s difficult to talk my way out of? What if he eats me 
only half-alive? What if all he is in his beach bum
orange is ghosts clothespinned to the laundry line?

In Iraq,

after a thousand and one nights,

someone will talk to someone else.

Markets will open

for regular customers.

Small feet will tickle

the giant feet of the Tigris.

Gulls will spread their wings

and no one will fire at them.

Women will walk the streets

without looking back in fear.

Men will give their real names

without putting their lives at risk.

Children will go to school

and come home again.

Chickens in the villages

won’t peck at human flesh

on the grass.

Disputes will take place

without any explosives.

A cloud will pass over cars

heading to work as usual.

A hand will wave

to someone leaving

or returning.

The sunrise will be the same

for those who wake

and those who never will.

And every moment

something ordinary

will happen

under the sun.

                      After Iqbal

Brother on the threshing floor, body like wheat,

and the red dirt that binds us, that nothing will release us

from. The fig tree, the date palm, the treacherous murder

unleashed into us now, the call blazing from vanity’s lungs,

jutting us to a future of mindless rain, wayward blizzards

of sand and snow. We were born to ward off this desolation

that grinds mountains into floss, bores into our books

for a whim that ordains blood, our blood

and others, our sisters, mothers. Without such fear

who will we be? What will we do without

this aching chord, without the bright morning that tore

the silver’s towers? Fire and the parched red dirt

that binds, the water stolen from our wells,

a black magic dredging the lower rungs of earth.

We dream of clover. The soft scent of young lambs

is the first letter of our alphabet, and the prophets

who tighten ropes around their waists to stifle hunger's

pangs, supplicant brows seeking light from earth’s core.

What will we do without the angel’s voice, a tide

sending us heavenward, a harmattan ushering us into the hell

of its lows. How can we live without such turbulent hope?

How can we accept the certainty of our quiet graves?

How can we stop waiting to witness the Lord’s face?

And what will we do without the hardened gaze?

The girls walk past, hair fluttering like commas

between poems of musk, a dream of touch like water

gently falling on smooth, warm stone.

What will we do without the anemones’ mournful dirge

stroking the dagger’s spine and the gelding’s nightmares.

Our hatred for our scoured hands, our love of the moment

when the sun drops only for our eyes? Who else will hear

birdsong as prayer, who will cleanse himself with the stroke

of sand? Who keeps the earth rotating with praise

of your name? And what will this spinning,

hurtling mean without our voices shouldering it

toward some ripe, sweetened pause?

What will you do, dear God, without us? How

will you fare, alone again in the empty vast, in the dark

of your creation, without us giving you your name?

^{This spice mix is featured in many of the dishes in this book, lending them a uniquely Palestinian flavor.
 —Reem Kassis, “The Palestinian Table”}

First they tango on my tongue,
nimble couples careening,
then together
form an Arab-style line dance
stepping, stomping, swaying.

West Indies allspice dazzles,
berries tangling with cinnamon sticks,
while cloves, Indonesian natives,
lead with a spirited solidarity solo.

Coriander seeds offer greetings in Hindi
as others toast comrades in languages
beyond borders and blockades.

Lifting up sisterhood, sun-wizened nutmeg
starts a sibling dance with mace.
Cumin demurs, then surprises
with subtle exultation.

Queen of spices cardamom,
host of the party, gives a nod to flavors
in hiding: lemony, sweet, warm, 
fragrant, nutty, pungent, hot.

Encouraged, feisty black peppercorns
shimmy center stage, organizing
the unique union of nine
for a vivacious global salute.

I am taken with the hot animal
of my skin, grateful to swing my limbs

and have them move as I intend, though
my knee, though my shoulder, though something
is torn or tearing. Today, a dozen squid, dead

on the harbor beach: one mostly buried,
one with skin empty as a shell and hollow

feeling, and, though the tentacles look soft,
I do not touch them. I imagine they
were startled to find themselves in the sun.

I imagine the tide simply went out
without them. I imagine they cannot

feel the black flies charting the raised hills
of their eyes. I write my name in the sand:
Donika Kelly. I watch eighteen seagulls

skim the sandbar and lift low in the sky.
I pick up a pebble that looks like a green egg.

To the ditch lily I say I am in love.
To the Jeep parked haphazardly on the narrow
street I am in love. To the roses, white

petals rimmed brown, to the yellow lined
pavement, to the house trimmed in gold I am

in love. I shout with the rough calculus
of walking. Just let me find my way back,
let me move like a tide come in.

^{translated from the Arabic by Khaled Mattawa}

Alone, now you are free.

You pick a sky and name it
                 a sky to live in
                 a sky to refuse

But if you want know
                 if you are really free
and to remain free
you must steady yourself
                 on a foothold of earth

so that the earth may rise
so that you may give
                 wings
to the children of earth
                 below 

^{in loving memory of Concepcion Cruz Agullana}

Everywhere is a cemetery,

and there will be no funeral.      on either side of the Pacific Ocean.

            No one will give last rites to my lola,    No guessing nurse will call my name or hers

I will have heard no doctor’s steely voice                             There’ll be no waiting room

to call her ‘the body.’             Over the body.      There will be no priest

            swinging a pendulum of incense         no prayers      no rosaries       there’s no money

                        No undertaker will proclaim her life                       There’ll be no glass plate     covering

her wooden casket.           There will be no casket   it’s too expensive              There will be no party

no lumpia            no noodles for no life long enough

                           No black attire               No hands clasping tissue or other hands

‘The body’ will not be seen          There will be my grandma in an urn–a tiny basket

            her curled body that lilted into the afterlife        after dementia   twenty years after grandpa

                                                  there’s no room for every  body

there’s no house for everybody to come in and stay    no room for sorrows    There will be no placeholder no

land     no candles        no water         no six-foot empty         she will be unmarked

                                                            my lola, an unnamed earthquake

           No one will hear her long name how it stretches a sunset   if my lola dies and no one sees   is

she still my lola?  is a canyon a series of cliffs?   there’s no place in the apartment for what rituals

maybe they will send her to the Philippines my grandma is a maybe                   and we are not they

         did you know                                                                                  when airlines carry the deceased

          they are called passengers

    they travel in their coffins        passengers in seats     are called        existing passengers

this small poem the only eulogy            where we’ll put my grandma     her existence laid to rest in a

poem

                      in this non-ilokano language                  a killer              rows and rows of dirt

money doesn’t grow                        maybe someone there       will bury her

                 how will i carry her     when only darkness has the space?

where will we put my grandma when we can’t afford our grief?

My grandmother kisses
as if bombs are bursting in the backyard,
where mint and jasmine lace their perfumes
through the kitchen window,
as if somewhere, a body is falling apart
and flames are making their way back
through the intricacies of a young boy’s thigh,
as if to walk out the door, your torso
would dance from exit wounds.
When my grandmother kisses, there would be
no flashy smooching, no western music
of pursed lips, she kisses as if to breathe
you inside her, nose pressed to cheek
so that your scent is relearned
and your sweat pearls into drops of gold
inside her lungs, as if while she holds you
death also, is clutching your wrist.
My grandmother kisses as if history
never ended, as if somewhere
a body is still
falling apart.

She shook with fear, or was it guilt,
at the officer’s unraised hand and smile.
How she leaned away, slowly, when he called
a tow truck instead of backup.
How her tears fled when he showed mercy
over rage for the couple on the side of the highway,
flat tire wasted against asphalt. She couldn’t help
but look at her white boyfriend pacing
along this strip of road and wonder, what if
this was a different part of Texas?
What if this hero was a different shade of power?
Would she be so lucky, or was it luck,
if the absence of a known pain
is just a heavy hand in repose?

^{translated from the Farsi by Haleh Liza Gafori}

Your laughter turns the world to paradise.
It tears through me like fire.
It teaches me.

Reborn in emptiness,
I emerge laughing,
here to learn from Love
new depths of laughter.

I’ve been short on courage,
but I have a heart of sunlight,
straight from the king’s hand.
I stir up laughter even in those who fear joy.

Crack open my shell. Steal the pearl.
I’ll still be laughing.
It’s the rookies who laugh only when they win.

Last night, the spirit of dawn came to my room
and gave me a lesson in laughter.
Our blazing roars lit the morning sky.

When I brood like a rain cloud,
laughter flashes through me.
It’s the habit of lightning to laugh through a storm.

Look at the furnace. Look at the stones.
See the glowing red veins?
Gold—laughing in fire, daring you,

“Prove you’re no fake!
Laugh even when you lose.”

We’re fodder for death so learn to laugh
from the angel of death.
He laughs at the jeweled belts and crowns of kings—
all that splendor’s just on loan.

Treetop blossoms erupt in laughter.
Petals rain down.

Laugh like the bud of a flower,
hugging the ground.
Its hidden smile opens to a laugh that lasts a lifetime.

There is this ringing hum  this
bullet-borne language  ringing
shell-fall and static this  late-night
ringing of threadwork and carpet  ringing
hiss and steam  this wing-beat
of rotors and tanks  broken
bodies ringing in steel  humming these
voices of dust  these years ringing
rifles in Babylon  rifles in Sumer
ringing these children their gravestones
and candy  their limbs gone missing  their
static-borne television  their ringing
this eardrum  this rifled symphonic  this
ringing of midnight in gunpowder and oil this
brake pad gone useless  this muzzle-flash singing  this
threading of bullets in muscle and bone  this ringing
hum  this ringing hum  this
ringing

“It is believed that the onion originally came from India. In Egypt it was an 

object of worship —why I haven’t been able to find out. From Egypt the onion 

entered Greece and on to Italy, thence into all of Europe.” — Better Living Cookbook

When I think how far the onion has traveled

just to enter my stew today, I could kneel and praise

all small forgotten miracles,

crackly paper peeling on the drainboard,

pearly layers in smooth agreement,

the way the knife enters onion

and onion falls apart on the chopping block,

a history revealed.

And I would never scold the onion

for causing tears.

It is right that tears fall

for something small and forgotten.

How at meal, we sit to eat,

commenting on texture of meat or herbal aroma

but never on the translucence of onion,

now limp, now divided,

or its traditionally honorable career:

For the sake of others,

disappear.

According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring

a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry

of the year was
awake tingling
near

the edge of the sea
concerned
with itself

sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings' wax

unsignificantly
off the coast
there was

a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning