“This poem turns the grammar of possession against itself. A litany of "the ___"—river, blood, oil, sea, greed—reads as the oppressor's own ledger, the syntax of the decree and the deed, where to article a thing is to claim it. The inventory tightens toward "the one who held the key," before grief breaks the tree. In the poem's dendritic logic—river deltas and trees, the same branching form running opposite ways—breaking the trunk is the river finding the sea: dispersal as escape, the capturable form becoming uncapturable. When the oppressor reaches for "the free," the article closes on nothing; the strikethrough leaves his grab documented on the page, the capturer captured in the posture of capturing. The oppressor remains trapped in the article he built. The river is on the move. Can the language keep up? The cage was always shaped to fit its maker.”
—Marwa Helal