Fady Joudah

My mother is three years younger than Nakba.But she doesn’t believe in great powers.Twice a day she brings God down from his thronethen reconciles with himthrough the mediation of the bestrecorded Quranic recitations.And she can’t bear meek women.She never once mentioned ...

I want to talk with you. It’s been a whilesince anyone’s talked with me, no one aroundsays to me the things I say to youwhen I’m sleepwalking.For example, yesterday at 3AM the soldiers rainedtear gas bombs on us, ten workerswho crammed in a walk-in refrigerator for ...

Not a main one,but each time I erase itI forget my hands over the objectswhose faithcompels their reappearanceon my knuckles. You are another kind of belief.It may dominate in the presence of the victim before meor reach out to the executioner in my heart.Each case the ...

No it isn’t. But lovetook one of my eyes for itself, lovehad vision before birth, diddiscuss with me the accuracyof what transpires in lenses. And then it went blind—slowlysoaked us up from behind a veil,and we couldn’t see it. A deaf air said to methat borders ...

We hold war’s hand,not so that it walks among us,but it is death,a bit tardy, we cajole it. We hold war’s hand,convinced that this is the last timeit waves catastrophe to us,since the road is a futile wall, and the country is searchingfor a photographof collective ...

Drowning in the time allotted for truce,we manufacture spare heartsin case we lose the hearts each of us has.We’re uncertain of life’s worthon the slipping edge,yet it seems hope can’t be shelled all at once.The minute details of war,poison gas we can’t thwartfrom ...

Fady Joudah, the translator of the following poem, discusses it in an essay for the Los Angeles Review of Books. Read it here. Colonial soldiers,what have they been doingto my poetry all these yearswhen I could have easily killed themin my poemsas they’ve killed my ...

Dawn broke on our heads.Endings were cut down to size.Our little ones’ feetrapidly turnedtoward the sky.Time set itself asideand places shut their eyes,like a child with wordsthat gray behind her lids.Ceilings tumbledwaterfalls of stone,and under the rubblethe last perceived ...