eye-less God, gutted sky, the scraping stones
misting in heaven’s front doors, arch-angels &
flutes, sterile heaven, wrought fire, dissolving tear
-gas, silent angels, tree-killers, Of expulsion, Of bone-
breakers, Of a thousand longings, a haunting of afterlives
the idea Of the Nation in a dutifully landscape,
trees placed loving, National Fund shrieks eagerly
blistering in a rage, a critical curiosity long passing,
Of a founded blood, Of a living archive & breathing ghost-
hearts, a pot-bellied desperation, damaged moonlights, the sea
hungering against shores, hollowing words, ancestral gods, claimed pathways,
fossiling whales and dinosaurs in new-born deserts, bow your head
heavy with light, suckling on a thunder, the ghosts bursting corridors are yelling
and dying do not open the door, wounded sun-loving hands
pulling nails in this glistening earth, the sails marking Love,
my palms holding my ex-lover like new sheets,
the mountains loz-blossoming and pregnant, poignant citrus
flesh on hair, the jasmine reaping a scythe, the moss with no tongue,
poppies’ grieving mouths, the flinch razing open land, the sun-shy ghosts
urging rapture in my country, we are made collateral damage for end of times
the exodus rescheduled, the sea moans in pleasure, remaking fantasy
O, where do I put my knees up? the fog is frosting, the sea
calling empire’s drying bones, a band of pirates called Etel,
Of prisons defeat, Of a salon of ghosts waltzing
in retribution, you say History, I say history, what Of language
to birds beyond & after the last sky? Once, we stood. Once,
the phoenix led a trail. Bethlehem, a domestic forest,
elegies of dust and scorched rooms, our Love was there
and we were Love, rooted in a night without kisses, I hold you
in my palms and flinch when you open towards me.
We are coming [back]. a flushing, bottomed grief, an expiring
dark, a wild bird brought forth like a basilisk,
Of I loved you & you I, Of our betrayals, Of
I did not lie when I said you are my home
(apartheid or naught). tonight, I am Born and
tonight, I will Die. this, a demand for love.

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leena aboutaleb is an Egyptian and Palestinian writer, primarily searching for fruiting trees to sleep under. She can be virtually located @na5leh on Twitter. 

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