أفكر في فلسطين
“Reflecting Home,” Shahd Alshamali
I GO TO THE BACKYARD TO PICK MINT LEAVES FOR MY MOTHER
Today, my mouth fell
wide when I saw the light
slip into the hills, and those boys
I grew up with did not
come back. Or, so I hear. Mama
would often ask me to gather
the mint leaves from behind our home,
and so I would leave for this
nectar — without it, there is nothing sweet
to speak of. I pray that
when I am gone, my people speak
as sweetly of me as I do of them.
I see us, often, steeped
in the land and hope that
a shore remains
a shore — not a place to become
yesterday. The girls have joined the boys
now — all of them
tucked just beyond
the earth. But I know they wouldn’t run
from their mothers — not without a fight,
a chase, a hunt, a honey, a home
for the tea to settle; a haven
for us to return to.
“The Weeping Meadow,” Shahd Alshamali
THE SUMMER MY COUSIN WENT MISSING
I should have asked how our khalto was holding
up, but I knew where she would be: her body
weary & unkind, buried in the day’s tasks; back turned
to the home she grew up in; seeds in the
farm’s soil, like miracles, sprouting as
she tends to them. Is this not always the case?
Child upon child goes, and someone’s mother
is no longer a mother. My aunt — a mother herself — looks,
for a moment, away; nothing she plants has roots
long enough to hold. She turns back anyway, looks
ahead. If we are too caught up in the end — like boys
fleeing from the day’s news — eyes worried
about that which we cannot control,
how ever will we stay fed? How ever
will we live long enough to grieve?
“THE SUMMER MY COUSIN WENT MISSING” first appeared in the Michigan Quarterly Review.
“I GO TO THE BACKYARD TO PICK MINT LEAVES FOR MY MOTHER” First appeared in Tariq Luthun’s Chapbook “How the Water Holds Me”
“Carrying Home,” Shahd Alshamali