Visibility | The Poetic Voices of Arab women from Algeria to Palestine
Jaffa, the outskirts of the ancient port city. S.V. AtallaStory
Splitting seeds
in her teeth she spits out
the years like spelling,
one letter after the other.
Bits of Jerusalem
are chips of blue tile.
Summer is hand-blown Hebron glass,
slender, stoppered.
When she says, Jaffa
the iris of each eye is a dark fruit;
her knuckles knot
high in her rustling hair.
Saniyya Saleh (Syria)
In Exile’
…Bird, hovering over the horizon
remember
bullets are everywhere –
Remember
me
the perpetual traveller –
all my life
I have willed to go forward and have not
advanced beyond
the borders of my grave.
Mai Sayigh
Departure
…Everything in the universe has an end
except my spilled blood…
Each time I think of it
you remain as large as your death.
Suheir Hammad
Land
his approach
to love he said
was that of a farmer
most love like
hunters and like
hunters most kill
what they desire
he tills
soil through toes
nose in the wet
earth he waits
prays to the gods
and slowly harvests
ever thankful
Nathalie Handel
Forgetting, Love
I am not afraid of loving. I am afraid of forgetting I loved
…I do believe I must leave everything of me to someone, to someplace
so that they could remember for me.
Suheir Hammad (Palestine)
 poetry
…never forgetting
where we come from
where we´ve been
and how sweet honey
on the lips of survivors.
Nathalie Handal
Love and Strange Horses – Intima’
The first time I rode a horse
my body found the music of fire,
crackling the wind. An unbearable pleasure
that also left me with a burn on the side of my leg.
A sign, the horsekeeper told me, of longing.
A need to return—to belong.
After all, departure is like
pushing the weight of our heart
against the village
whose name has kept us awake.
