[…]

In the arboretum the mosquitoes were polite.

They purchased our blood for a fair

price as we paused for the flowers.

My iPhone identified the plants.

Delete, reinstall. The truth

rides photons, always arriving

beautiful, like God, periodically dead or terminated.

Hibiscus. Marigold. My intelligence

offers my ignorance hope,

my wish manacles me to it.

We needed memory, we got myelin.

Slow at first to guard us

from the animal we’re destined to suppress,

rise above. And then fast,

foaming at the terabyte.

Between loss and gain, we discard and preserve.

Look how we put on clothes into the grave.

How others don’t.

[…]

If you can read this

and are human, are you

a human shield? Is your good

a force for goods? Do you elect

mass murderers before or after

they declare their intent?

Do they protect

your life when they destroy

other lives: other lives

you sentence to siege,

and when they rise

across your legal or illegal border,

awful or unlawful order,

you kill them, all

for some or part for whole,

and say, they are free

birds, migrants to the sky,

each soul a murmuration.

Or they’re in suicide, you say,

in fratricide. They know

you’re no brother, no sister.

If you can read this

and are not a barbarian.

---

FADY JOUDAH’s sixth poetry collection […] was composed during the the early months of the genocide in Gaza in late 2023. It is available from Milkweed Editions.