Before Gaza, a Fall

by Ahmad Almallah

*
The sick leaves hang–
On tight.

*
There is not enough–
numbers
to
occupy the count?

Death does its work.

Disappears.

And the sick
leaves turn to
the ground.

*
The river hits.

Makes way.

Don’t repeat

Repeat.

*
Pollen and dirt to the
Side. What holds the
Future? A nothing is
Not enough. Gaza,
Had to
Go in numbers.
And now you, who are
You? and
that sum:
where,
where: lasts beyond
Never.
*
At the construction site.

Memory and flowers.

Metal and wood.

*
Some things fall too hard.
Traffic above water hold
the scene
together?
To gather?

Eye thinks shots. Boom.
Bullets.

Did I have to predict the
Future?

*
Birds drench in filth–
This is how;
The world

Works.

And the moon: a half
egg-shell
in the sky.

About the Author

Ahmad Almallah is a poet from Palestine. His first book of poems Bitter English is available in the Phoenix Poets Series from the University of Chicago Press. His new book Border Wisdom is now available from Winter Editions. He received the Edith Goldberg Paulson Memorial Prize for Creative Writing, and his set of poems “Recourse,” won the Blanche Colton Williams Fellowship. His poems and other writings have appeared in Jacket2, Michigan Quarterly Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Great River Review, Kenyon Review, Poetry and American Poetry Review, Al-Arabi Al-Jadid and Al-Quds Al-Arabi among others. His English works have been translated into Arabic, Russian and Telugu. He is currently Artist in Residence in Creative Writing at the University of Pennsylvania.