crows flock above the city.
from my apartment— basement floor— i cannot see them. but i hear them, their tempo quickening. guttural triumph of caw caw caw.
i stand at the windowsill, coffee in hand.
stretch my neck for crow.
if i strain far enough, perhaps i can spot him in the grey sky soup.
crow grows distant. is distance a feeling?
a lone seagull begins to bleat.
two years ago, on November 14th, writer and artist Etel Adnan passed away.
she was 96 years old.
born in Beirut in 1925, Adnan knew many homes and many wars. her writing continues to shape my creative practice.
below is a poem i wrote while reflecting on what i learn and receive from her.
the poem was originally published online by Mizna in a folio last fall. i am continually struck by the prophetic nature of poetry. how it allows us to simultaneously gaze into the future and the past.
our displacement, our migration, has wings—
and ghosts, with whom, when trusted
we are permitted to speak yes we must
call a genocide a genocide
then enter the doorway of poetry
through protest.you have left us a string of yellow red purple blue suns
which we follow into the gaps of collective memory
illuminated. here in this desert you teach us to listen
to strengthen sensitivity to harness attention
to never collapse into a single image
and isn’t that the queerest thing?we are a porous material, you say
5 months in one place
7 in another
shuffling borders in our mouth
the question of language, the question of home.we don’t have to be visible to inhabit our destiny:
your attunement
to this world
and the next—
phototaxis.gratitude for your lineage
gratitude for your call to live pursued by wonder,
unfolding the infinite into place.
on Sunday, Germany’s “anti-semitism” commissioner suggested that “basic rights should only be available to German citizens.” it is now illegal to say "stop the genocide" in Berlin.
beloveds, we will not be intimidated.
we will say what we see.
yours in poems,
emet
poems:
I Grant You Refuge by Palestinian poet Hiba Abu Nada, who died a martyr— killed in her home in south Gaza by an Israeli raid on Oct. 20th, 2023.
Revision by Hala Alyan
Revenge by Taha Muhammad Ali
other things:
More on Etel Adnan:
“I am very sensitive to beauty…” an interview with Etel Adnan in her home in Paris.
Excerpt from her text The Arab Apocalypse (written during the 1975 civil war in Lebanon)
“How to write what you cannot hear? It begins with deletion of “certain words,” Shibli says, “the most immediate one is ‘Palestine’, the names of places we articulate in Arabic but are never present in road signs or maps…” Adania Shibli in The Guardian
Two texts by Berlin-based writer Haytham El-Wardany: True Fables (English) and Gaza 2035 (German, Arabic)