The New Dictionary
The genocide has never tired
of visiting the city,
bringing its nails and teeth and legs
and the shadow of ghosts
walking side by side,
bringing its tongue to consume the language of a child.
So many of our children
have been raised to heaven.
The roads in the sky are crowded.
Souls, angels, warplanes, rockets.
I think of the rest of the children who are still on earth.
Genocide, missiles, death, corpse,
heads, shrapnel, quadcopter, tent,
death, and displacement are the new vocabulary test
Don’t worry, the child knows them all.
The eyes of the child see all the meanings.
If only spring were the lone missing word.
But dad and mom, house and home and spring,
fresh cold watermelon, grapes, olives, swing,
and sweet dreams at bed time—
when there were a bed and a time—are now
the missing words of the new dictionary.
Anti-Ishmaelism
I am Ishmael,
I am the offspring of the maid
but the oldest son too.
I am Ishmael,
the unwanted brother.
I carry the DNA of Abraham too.
I am Ishmael,
God’s first gift to Abraham.
I am also chosen.
I am Ishmael,
the light of Abraham is in my heart.
I am circumcised too.
I am Ishmael,
the Arabs’ grandfather. The promise of
the land of milk and honey is mine.
I Was A Superhero
Today, I fantasized
I was a superhero.
And yes, before you ask,
I wore my underwear
over my pants.
My name was not Basman
but BASMAN in shiny letters.
My weapon? Pen and notebook!
My superpower? Truth!
I practiced facing Sabra,
that fancier, fitter, whiter
Israeli superhero, so much better
in the eyes of the world.
Now, we stand face to face.
I have the strongest weapon!
I begin to speak—bold, clear—
yet suddenly her rocket
obliterates my voice.
And I am dying.
List
I am not sure I can fit
all that my occupier hates
into a single list.
He hates my being,
so he kills us by the tens of thousands.
He hates my laughter,
so he bombs and burns my days to misery.
He hates my sleep,
so his jets and rockets roar all night.
He hates my smile,
so he awakes me into nightmares.
He hates our heroes,
so he invents his Wonder Woman, Gal.
He hates the Torah’s villains,
so he calls us Amalekites and slays us in their place.
He hates Allah and Jesus,
so he desecrates our mosques, churches, and hospitals.
He hates my books,
so he burns and buries them in rubble.
He hates my flesh,
so he leaves my rotting body to the dogs.
He hates my children,
so he beheads them with his snipers and tanks.
He hates the truth,
so he kills our journalists and sells his propaganda.
He hates our students,
so he shells and shoots them in their schools.
He fears our poetry,
so he kills our poets, not knowing each death writes another line.
Dabka
Dance in the middle of the street,
Move inside storms of adrenaline.
In a caged city, but never a caged soul.
You stole my land but not my identity.
Dabka is in our blood.
You will never steal it.
Step right, step left, jump up.
Move to the tabla and timbrel.
Hand in hand across the floor,
Kofia shakes at every lifted shoulder.
Sweat is the fruit of joy,
watering our roots in Palestine.
Let olive leaves rustle and, hands clap.
Let us dance, then fly free as canaries.
First Published in Falastin Magazine
Dear Greta,
The bombs don't go easy on the climate.
The weather is too darn hot today.
And I wonder what burns my eyes more,
the sweat or the scenes of genocide
from Gaza.
At this moment, I can't stop thinking of myself and my friends
as sheep dragged to their slaughter, the korban of Eid.
But God's name this time is Yahweh.
My name is Amalekite.
Amalekite—fashionable name for a korban.
You know I have never seen Gaza from a boat in
the middle of the Mediterranean.
And I am not daring enough to swallow my saliva and
ask you how my house looks from a far.
I can't even ask: Did you see my house?
I wish I could be with you.
I wonder how humanity can be carried in a boat?
Isn't it supposed to be heavier, bigger?
I wanted to thank you for carrying humanity in a boat.
But as a recognized human animal,
I am not sure what humanity is.
I keep asking about my other half:
What is human?
Yours sincerely,
The human animal, Basman
Letter To Rihanna At The Time of Super Bowl
I don't know if it's silly for a Palestinian
to wish to stay alive,
not to die until the time of the Super Bowl.
But I would love to watch Rihanna,
and if I must die, I'd rather the last voice
in my ears to be Rihanna not
a stupid buzzing piece of shit.
Rihanna, I have tried to love the drone,
Writing it an ode.
But unlike you, Riri, it doesn't make me feel
like I am the only guy in the world, it’ll ever love.
All it sends are missiles and hate.
Here it comes again,
buzzing even
through my veins.
I run to your voice from the remains of its sound—
into my head, even in the drone’s brief rest—
singing loud with you, SOS please, somebody help me.
It's not healthy for me to feel this.
In the Poem,
I give the hospital legs and wheels,
but would that be enough for it to
survive the faster missiles?
I sculpt arms for my home,
but would it fold the walls
before the memories get amputated?
I draw the sea a mouth,
but would it swallow Gaza,
keep her inside until the genocide is over?
I sew the body of a young girl
That was split in half, giving her body life.
But would death stop its constant revisiting?
Would death be like a gentle puff of air?
The Body of Santa
The Palestinian civil defense found bits
of his hat, his red suit, and a few fragments
from his bag of presents, perhaps.
They continued removing rubble by hand.
The body of Santa was never found.
Some witnesses claim they saw him
distributing presents in Ahli hospital
before the bombs destroyed it.
After the killing of Santa in Gaza,
Mrs. Claus applied to the U.S. government,
to investigate the murder of her husband
and the mysterious absence of his body.
Israel reassured the U.S. president
that they will investigate the crime,
the mistake, the incident, the tragedy.
Odd how their tongues keep slipping.
The IOF has dropped a new American bomb
that evaporates bodies, a relief to Israelis,
who fear even dead Palestinians as evidence
more than they fear Hamas.
One witness claims he saw Santa resurrected
and ascending into the sky.
Maybe he is showing God his stained bag of
the remaining presents—flesh, heads and bones.
First Published in We Are Not Numbers
