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August 2018

for Marilyn Hacker   Outside, the clouds part and a cold sun silvers the sea. Inside, as butterflies and swimming women surrender the mantelpiece to polar bear cubs and bright berries, I lie on the sofa reading the Qur’an, a heart-shaped cushion tucked under my arm. Like caviar-hunters, the surgeons have filleted my chest, scooped out every last suspect cell. Their blue dye haloes my nipple: for a year my breast will weep lapis lazuli tears. Online, a man with eyes of dark fire says he admires my courage. I am not brave. All I have done is submit to the will of the seasons, embrace an untranslatable change.

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Much as I wish to write only poemsin which tall trees standfor the lungs of the world and the moonrises like a sigh in their branches,I still sometimes dreamof being a serial killer. TonightI raped a faceless young womanin a corrugated sewage tunnel,disembowelled her and smearedfistfuls of viscera and shitover the tender breastsof my tremblingaccomplice, an act I filmedand stored on a micro-SD cardsoon discoveredby the IT guy sent to fix my workcomputer, a silent man I hunted in the darkplaying fields of a secret NATO base,awakening at four a.m.just before the slaughter. To healthe disappointment,I watched YouTube videosof Arab

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  the high the way   Dust through my eyelashes, fluffed out pollen California ride the coastline up down a redwood between you, me yellowjackets eat meat we laugh   stop for baby woodpecker bird to save you say “it’s got spots, it’s a woodpecker” look up at me, chirp, empty throat, dry and blind I got nothing to regurgitate, not a worm, not a dream   So die in the sun in the rock we talk about spotted wings, where we could pretend end ain’t here nor there, right ahead right around the bend, Highway One the only end   Smell

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A balcony Four chairs My mother, brother, and I sat With the Tante Fathiyye of my childhood At a scraped plastic table Its once whiteness smudged. Her back turned to the view of the sea Wearing her wrinkles like its waves She nibbled at her mankoushe Stirred gunpowder into her tea As she Told us how Kiryat Shmona was founded over skeletons in her hometown, how Her family evacuated Fled a war and snuggled in the arms of another Anchorless A series of houses Flooded Burnt Pulverized With scraps of life between escapes How her eight-year-old nephew drowned His mother lost her mind And two of her cousins Threw their lives on a border And snuck Back into Palestine In an ambulance How her brother’s accidental nap On the roof

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  Tout omnia tutto todo   I’ve dabbled in it all Enough to make this mustache remarkable— believable Enough to make these knuckles crooked— broken Enough to not trust my own fingertips   I’ve seen the sun set over psychic tears purple, only purple, over the ocean over brains, melted, melting Rivers crackling electric synapse washed out to sea bobbing up the seagull shit Lost steel cartons of China Tuna chin Albatross eyes rolling tide   I’ve watched thighs twist with sweat naked torsos naked breasts I’ve wondered if they will connect with my own A foot a toe a mouth I’ve

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For Fadwa Suleiman   While the same rain fell on suburbs of exile and motherless children,   whose courage was certainty whose impatience turned to doubt,   she came in the door like a comrade, lover, friend, and took off her shoes –   older than my daughter but too young to be my sister.                    ***   Sister of someone who was forced to denounce her on television;   pacifist in keffiyeh,       but they got guns anyway –   She rolled impatient exilic cigarettes, wrote fables of mourning :   the mother tucked the child in her bed, and slit the dove’s throat.                     ***   Slit-throat, cutthroat sun slashed wrists of early spring rain. Wolves at a distance   give up verse panegyrics and howl like politicians.   Is hope a fatal disease,

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       We sat together during recess      Purple nails laughing on the piste      of your knee, a lifespan of wild whale laughters             Friends in uniforms as twins Big-tooth, dumb-love   Distance makes us crave milk our bones no longer need We are old now Not in rocking chairs                                                                                              We wrote with fingers in the fog                                                Signed imaginary names on a willow                                                We weren’t kids, simply spirited   As time passed our hugs retired It hurts when we’re just an Image Can you help me find what fell?   It’s too abstract to search for something Cubist                         We are people we don’t know                       Conversations are hard to knit                       Without alphabets     Stranger,

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my mother thinks trump is the dajjal  calls the non-arab men in my life “international”   she does not understand isis  because “prophet mohamed said be mindful when eating garlic  so as not to harm others so why does daesh think it is ok to kill people”  like her nephew at 19 right before christmas of ’14.   i tell her about a time i was turned down by a boy because i wear hijab she says “ohhh you mean       the way that you do”  i say “no mama, i mean           the fact that i do”    i overhear my father on work calls,  tossing in ya3nis and yallahs  too engrossed in the topic to realize  he’s using arabic.   i

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  For Connor James Nye, 3 months old   You smile at everyone. When lifted, toted, you hold onto shoulder or sleeve, gazing curiously, each room or face. Irish sheep, stuffed puppy, your daddy’s clown. Dwelling in a tender current of care, you know nothing of cruelties people do to one another. You did not see the intricate avenues of Aleppo. Tiled ceilings, arching rooms. The villages of Palestine could still be neatly terraced in your brain. When you smile, we might all be wishing each other well. When you startle at a loud sound, await the power of softness to settle

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About Us
Rusted Radishes: Beirut Literary and Art Journal was founded in the English Department of the American University of Beirut in 2012 with the intention of creating a space for both emerging and established writers who have a connection to Lebanon.
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