Member Poem

A chin tattooed, green, with the flower inks
The dangled gold coins on the forehead
Your grandfather gave those to me when we got married
I was still a babe then
Needlepoint on blankets sown and stored on cabinet tops
Ground henna, darkened red with steeped tea leaves
Henna shouldn’t be orange like the midday sun
It should be the red earth of the valley
or the setting of the sun when prayer is called
We vend when the sun bends, and rise when the moon calls

Where are the olive trees that we would go and pick
with sisters and nieces up beyond the sanasil
from atop the highest hill in the town, where the lookout,
the razor-top fence, was built
They would watch us pick, but we would sing anyway
To the valley, beautiful and princely, your bridegroom is
To the Quds gate, we seek to travel today
Protected by god, protected by god

When the olive oil would come, the town men would sigh
and the families would drench torn bread in it,
hungry for the earth, as if we hadn’t eaten for centuries
It tasted bitter like the thorns beneath the watch tower
pressed,
and then alive once more.

on the glistening bodies of newborns
and in the braids of the Hajjat
and in the metal cubes sent westward
on the backs of the birds who have flown
away from the valley, from the gates of the Quds.