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Palestinian-American poet and political activist Suheir Hammad has published a book of poems, Born Palestinian, Born Black, and a memoir, Drops Of This Story, and is prominently featured in Listen Up! An Anthology Of Spoken Work Poetry. Recipient of the Audre Lourde Writing Award from Hunter College, the Morris Center for Healing Poetry Award, and a New York Mills Artist Residency in Minnesota, Suheir is a frequent reader at New York reading venues, including numerous radio appearances, and has performed with The All That Band and Rhythms of Aqua. Naomi Shihab Nye has called Hammad's work "a brave flag over the dispossessed." Suheir has recently been touring with the Tony Award-winning Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry Jam. [12 min, 2 sec, 8 MB, MPEG-4/Quicktime video format] B E Y O N D W O R D S 1. Where has my language gone? The poet searches for words to wrap around these times Make them sense Make them pretty Make them useful Words from the past haunt our conversations Empire and Crusade Plans and Centuries All these words cleared understanding before Fall heavy now And weightless into this abyss of bad news I have seen the photographs Again words Prison Torture Desperate for words I can write That are not profane That are objective Read as rational So people will not stop reading this self-conscious poem So my parents will not be embarrassed So Americans will demand the return of their own Desperate for words I can write So I can keep from becoming something hard and unforgiving Language has failed me I am told to believe nothing I read Then everything I read I am given my own face to be wary of I am told to fear colors as alerts I am told over and over Iraq is not Palestine Kabul is not New York The photos Women Raped Posed as girls gone wild This is entertainment This is staged This is recorded Men Chained Do words such as humiliation and torture Truly fit the immensity of these acts? What happens to those who survive? What happens to those responsible? Haiti is not Chechnya Chiapas is not East L.A. Iraq is not Palestine Over and over I am told I am given a vantage point and a lens and instructed Do not move Do not look up Do not look down I am falling 2. No connections here No illuminated parallels Two different histories and two different peoples Make no links Do not confuse the issues Only confuse the people For 56 years Israel has legitimized This type of behavior Sanctioned violence in the name of a god Who does not have enough love for us all A god who chooses sides A god who has favorites and chosen ones A god who cuts deals and shuffles souls The type of god who does not answer prayers Who understands only one language A god who does not worry his beautiful mind with Such ugliness I am told this is America's god The photos from Rafah Palestine It is 1948 and 2004 in the same frame Their eyes say to the camera What will you do with this pain? Where will you take it? Can you take it from me? This space between the lens and the subjects Is concentrated with pleas for witness With promises of cycles unbroken With children's bicycles under the rubble of once were homes Another level of exile is being constructed And I am falling Aaagghh, ya Phalesteen What is it about us they hate so much? This face? These eyes? This obstinate refusal to die? How much trauma can one nation endure with the world staring? Some mouths open in shock Others silent and sneering While women scream at a frequency the living cannot hear Again? Again ya Phalesteen? 3. How fucked up is it that I have to choose between ending One occupation or another? Partition my time and portion my information I have to make Nice Play Fair and Polite When I want to tear open my chest to void it of this emptiness This ache has eaten into my head and wears down my dreams My friends worry I am not eating enough Am taking too much on Too much in I find nowhere to rest this responsibility If I say nothing I am complicit If I say something I am isolated as extreme As a theorist in conspiracy As if war is ever a coincidence As if genocide simply happens This is about oil and land and water This is about illusion and the taking on of airs The poor once again the munitions in rich men's cannons This is about light and dark There is no black and white in humanity I am told Venezuela is not Cuba Rwanda is not Kurdistan I am not the woman kneeling In front of soldiers and their cameras and their weapons I am not the child shot in the head by the Israeli Defense Forces I am not the starving AIDS inflicted mother Praying I live longer than my children So they will not be orphaned and sick and have to bury me I am not the child who watched Her family chopped to death in Lebanon in Sudan in Nicaragua I am not the father who leaves his children so as not to hear their empty Bellies call out Baba, where is the bread? I am the woman whose taxes outfitted this tragedy The American the Authority does not speak for The Arab the Arab leaders do not speak for The woman whose shouts of Not in My Name Were spit back at me as a slogan of the misguided at best I am the girl from Brooklyn told to mind her business I am the poet in search of new words And a new world Not Mars 4. We use antiquated terms that cannot stretch enough to touch this truth We have not learned from the past enough to not repeat it I am told it has always been this way War and Pillage Rape is older than prostitution And prostitution is the oldest politic The way the world has always been The pimps and those they pimp The human race has always left Those who fall behind If I am to survive then I learn from the present From the future promised We learn to live with madness One cannot be healthy in a sick world Only navigate illnesses Only medicate wounds Pray you are not contagious Try to hurt no one My elders say dissent has always been watched Radical ideas have always been recorded But even those who have lived on the margins admit Under breath It has never been this bad Not everyone is suffering True Most thirst A few swim in pools that fake connection to seas Most starve I throw away meals I have no appetite for You can shop from your couch and eat food fast And never think about anything other than your credit card debt And the next hour's purchases Shop and stop asking questions I have envied this stupor Even knowing it is the least honorable suicide Even knowing its apathy is another kind of murder 5. Sometimes all you can do is inhale and exhale Life a shallow version of its potential Sometimes all you can do is search for life where you are In the city A flash of yellow on the basketball court The divine geometry in the pattern of a girl's hijab For a week I have been cleaning and knifing enough Parsley for tabbouleh to feed hundreds I pray over the green That what I make will feed those in need of a meal There is still love in us The proof is that we are watching it die There is still hope in us Hope is there in my sisters' eyes There is still enough resistance in us To create a world where there is no Your people or my people But our people Our people who kill Our people who are killed I somehow know love will save us The proof is in the stories not broadcast The poems not published The truth between the lies The stories whispered in the dusk of this day I know somehow love will save us Though I can't find the passion or desire in my body to make it There is still a source for peace deeply embedded in this chaos I know love will save us Though words fail to point out how Amazingly I still pray To a god I envision to be larger than any nation Any religion And I still hunt for language to gather into a poem That I pray will feed those like me In need of proof they are not alone Related Links
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