Poetry is a powerful tool used by marginalized communities for centuries to express their sorrows, happiness, and unique experiences. Palestinian …
5 Must-Read Poetry Collections by Palestinians
Tag: #Writerscommunity
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5 Must-Read Poetry Collections by Palestinians
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Five to Celebrate International Prize for Arabic Fiction Winner Mohamed Alnaas
MAY 22, 2022 — Today, International Prize for Arabic Fiction chair of judges Shukri Mabkhout announced that Mohamed Alnaas was the prize’s 2022 …
Five to Celebrate International Prize for Arabic Fiction Winner Mohamed Alnaas -
When Death Comes Like a Thief in the Night #Reblog
I don’t use the reblog feature here often, even though it is on my blog menu…however, this is worth it. trE’s blog post moved me and touched me in a special way today. Her writing here is poignant, moving and genius.
I miss them. Ido.
Photo by Lucxama Sylvain viaPexels I woke up crying a couple of nights ago. My head was aching. My stomach had knots in it I could not reduce or massage away. Their voices rang in my head — each one of them begging me not to forget them. And how could I? I have not. I never will. When death comes, it enters like a thief in the night — snatching up your last breath. Death has one agenda; kill you. It will complete its task. When it’s time — your time, it will prevail.
You cannot fight it. If you do so, prepare to lose. And you will lose horribly.
As much as I wanted to silence them, it felt disrespectful not to let them speak — not to give them the floor. I had to step aside. It was time I stepped aside. I am sharing my beautiful friends; once here…
View original post 1,173 more words
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FEAST #poetry by jay
Your not suppose
to wrap yourself
around my heart.
Do you see me?
Or, do you just enjoy
feasting on the flesh
of my heart,
as the devil enjoys
feasting
on your lost soul?
This heart,
is not on that menu.
©️Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by Kaboompics .com from Pexels
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EVERY POEM HAS ANCESTORS- an article from the PARIS REVIEW
N. SCOTT MOMADAY. PHOTO: DARREN VIGIL GRAY.EVERY N. SCOTT MOMADAY: recipient of the 2021 Hadada Award
“In this time of a virus roaming methodically across the earth, infecting the earth’s population, this poem centers us in the natural world, and declares a healing. I imagine the voice of Earth speaking the first stanza. The Earth, and all beings, are always moving toward healing. This poem reminds us.” PARIS REVIEW
“The Delight Song of Tsoai-Talee”
I am a feather on the bright sky
I am the blue horse that runs in the plain
I am the fish that rolls, shining, in the water
I am the shadow that follows a child
I am the evening light, the lustre of meadows
I am an eagle playing with the wind
I am a cluster of bright beads
I am the farthest …read full poem -
THIS PENCIL- #poetry by jay
Lately, since being vaccinated and also working on some other writing projects, I’ve taken some time to take stock of this past year and the immense gratitude I feel now, to get back to visiting in person with my mom, and some other outings we weren’t comfortable taking before the vaccine.
In that vein, I’ve been revisiting some older poetry I wrote, while reflecting on what’s ahead of us. This past year, as traumatizing as it was, has allowed me to shift my perspective to understand on a deeper level – what, where, and how do I want to spend my time moving forward. As an artist and poet, this is the “good” part where being alone and holed up can produce some good results, I suppose, in this collective trauma we faced/face.
The poem below was first posted to my blog August 2020, in the height of this pandemic.
I wrote this poem several years ago when I was still very much into handwriting everything. Things have definitely changed since those days. I can’t recall the last time I picked up a pencil to write any poetry or other writing, except to jot down some lists etc…
this pencil is my savior, it is my voice
this pencil sings of lost love
of lost hope
the tree of life that grows
the garden of the dark fruit
this wood; it is my (Read Poem)#Poet #Artist #Reflecting
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LOCKDOWN POEMS #poetry by jay
Poetry collections in times of the Covid crises. A selection by the Guardian today…
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Lone Duck #Poetry
bird duck
flip dip flap
through clouds
one not flocked
by friends
merely skipping down
pond to pond
cloud to cloud
lone duck bowling pin
flappy winged fowl
out of synch, out of step
no rhythm, to be found
awkward, imbalanced
a lone waterfowl
squawk squawk
squeak squeak
duck beak chatter
flip flap hovercraft
the hunter’s mallard
bird duck bowling pin
splash crash sound-
Boom!
a cannon shot landing
webbed foot, gliding down.
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by Christian puta on Unsplash
#Freeverse #Poem #Mallards #Rhymes
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Naomi Shihab Nye #Poetry
Two great Poems today- With a Highlight on Palestinian American Poet, Naomi Shihab Nye
I periodically turn to poets from my heritage and am always reminded and delighted by the deep roots we have as Palestinian’s in the art forms of Spoken Word, Storytelling and Poetry.
Naomi Shihab Nye was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Her father was a Palestinian refugee and her mother an American of German and Swiss descent, and Nye spent her adolescence in both Jerusalem and San Antonio, Texas. She earned her BA from Trinity University in San Antonio. Nye is the recipient of numerous honors and awards for her work, including the Ivan Sandrof Award for Lifetime Achievement from the National Book Critics Circle, the Lavan Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, the Carity Randall Prize, the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry award, the Robert Creeley Prize, and many Pushcart Prizes. She has received fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and she was a Witter Bynner Fellow. From 2010 to 2015 she served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. In 2018 she was awarded the Lon Tinkle Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Texas Institute of Letters. Nye is the Poetry Foundation’s Young People’s Poet Laureate. ( poetryfoundation.org )
Blood
“A true Arab knows how to catch a fly in his hands,”
my father would say. And he’d prove it,
cupping the buzzer instantly
while the host with the swatter stared.In the spring our palms peeled like snakes.
True Arabs believed watermelon could heal fifty ways.
I changed these to fit the occasion.Years before, a girl knocked,
wanted to see the Arab.
I said we didn’t have one.
After that, my father told me who he was,
“Shihab”—“shooting star”—
a good name, borrowed from the sky.
Once I said, “When we die, we give it back?”
He said that’s what a true Arab would say.Today the headlines clot in my blood.
A little Palestinian dangles a truck on the front page.
Homeless fig, this tragedy with a terrible root
is too big for us. What flag can we wave?
I wave the flag of stone and seed,
table mat stitched in blue.I call my father, we talk around the news.
It is too much for him,
neither of his two languages can reach it.
I drive into the country to find sheep, cows,
to plead with the air:
Who calls anyone civilized?
Where can the crying heart graze?
What does a true Arab do now?Naomi Shihab Nye, “Blood” from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Portland, Oregon: Far Corner Books, 1995). Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Reprinted with the permission of the author.Source: Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Far Corner Books, 1995)
A Palestinian Might Say
What?
You don’t feel at home in your country,
almost overnight?
All the simple things
you cared about,
maybe took for granted. . .
you feel
insulted, invisible?
Almost as if you’re not there?
But you’re there.
Where before you mingled freely. . .
appreciated people who weren’t
just like you. . .
divisions grow stronger.
That’s what “chosen” and “unchosen” will do.
(Just keep your eyes on your houses and gardens.
Keep your eyes on that tree in bloom.)
Yes, a wall. Ours came later but. . .
who talks about how sad the land looks,
marked by a massive wall?
That’s not a normal shadow.
It’s something else looming over your lives.Naomi Shihab Nye, “A Palestinian Might Say” from The Tiny Journalist. Copyright © 2019 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Reprinted by permission of BOA Editions, Ltd., http://www.boaeditions.org.
Photo Credit: Wikipedia
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Locked In On Sunshine #Poetry
locked in on sunshine
forgot the day was beautiful
clamped inside like a turtle
that hides in his shell
I cast away the chance to ride
alongside the butterfly flying
and the pelican gliding low
to the shore, planing the surface
for a delectable score.
I cast aside on purpose, the beauty
of the tide, to lap up the sun
and hold it close to my tight cheek,
hopeful to rest free, the tightness
that resides between my brows and teeth,
a pointed tip of concern to get all this shit done
fragile in heat, in quicksand I run,
I retreat, I cast away the belief
of the day, that more of the sun’s begging rays
call to me, to play with promise,
without delay, stricken without purpose
like a fricken- viral virus,
waiting it out to receive the call, the call
to hither, to yonder, to run for the vaccine gun,
in quest of life lived without purpose
and fear, to get locked in on sunshine,
on a day that holds everyday in captive repeat,
I release like the butterfly from hand to free hand,
to freedom sweet freedom, oh’ to sing like the free
locked out of fear of a virus sinking down,
sinking down like the sun,
sinking down on me.
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo credit- https://www.pexels.com/photo/tall-building-near-trees-1798687/
#Poetry #Freeverse #Sunshine
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My Piece “The Riddle of Death” Included for Publication #Poetry #Prose
I’m excited to have my piece, “The Riddle of Death”, included in Issue I: hebe
( the fountain of youth ) over at Free Verse Revolution .
Thank you to Kristiana Reed, for including me in this great first edition, alongside many other talented poets, writers and artists.
The Riddle of Death
Jay Mora-ShihadehBurst forth the ships! Time has come, forever traced, the
legend, the place where life lives to never-cease. She
strokes the night and whistles through daylight, the legend
of prowess and praise, her locks flowing like honey, sweet
and free. The deserts welcome the quenching rain, the
love from fountains above, pouring like wine into chaliced
mouths in an endless time. The forests and mountains
share their love forever-more, dipping backwards and…read more -
Icons
Our stretching souls
and empty spirits
wake as sunrise smiles.
TV’s click on
and children chortle
as icons display.
©️Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by Josh Willink from Pexels
#Micropoetry #Micropoems #Icons
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Ravaged #Poetry
That greedy glint
in the eye of the fooled
the eye of the lost
my heart left in the home of the tricked
What does it take for them to wake up?
To stop selling their fortunes
for the land of milk and honey
the land where the streets are paved in gold
the lies told to lure them
What will it take before the tales of fools
are replaced with the folklore of the ancient?
The contentment of the indigenous?
What will it take for the
Mad Hatter to end his greedy voyages
into the hearts of the innocent?
I am ravaged like the forests of the Amazon!
Ravaged like the tombs of Egypt!
And where do the tombs rest now?
In the land of the greedy, the violent
in the land of the weeping
I am the ravaged exile!
The ravaged land of the tricked
and the ravaged heart
of the fool.
©️Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by Free Creative Stuff from Pexels
#Spokenword #Ravaged #Poet #Lies
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Did You Know I could Stay Here All Day? #Poetry
Did you know I could stay here all day?
writing and wasting away
words keep coming
releasing a gorge
an orgy of thumping dancing syllables surge
playing on my tongue, jumping in my head
begging to display.
I love this feeling, intensity and healing
pleasing my body with lusciousness reeling,
bleeding from my mouth to my page.
Did you know I could stay here all day?
penning and pining, bated breath reclining
waiting, for something to say.
it’s nighttime now, but time is out of place
when images are flying, bouncing from space
to grace this page alive,
with such disgrace
emboldened, completely burning away.
Did you know I could stay here all day?
©️Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by Lisa Fotios from Pexels
Original Post first blogged on Feb. 9th 2020
This poem came up, when my wife and I were talking about how fast time goes by, when you are in that flow of creativity as an artist. And, I wrote this as an expression of that experience, and damnit, it’s hard to pull ones self away from that flow, to attend to the ever nagging “tasks”, that prey on me, on a daily basis. This will forever be my love and my potential demise, I suppose. arggghh!
#Poetry #Rhymes #Healing #Writing
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Palestinian American Poet, Fady Joudeh #Poetry
Photo by Cybele Knowles
To follow up from last week’s post about poet Mahmoud Darwish ( read Post ) This post is about the poet, who translated Darwish’s Poetry. Fady Joudeh, a Palestinian American poet and Physician, has translated several of Darwish’s Poems.
Joudeh lives with his family in Houston, Texas where he practices Internal Medicine.
“Joudah translated several collections of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish’s work in The Butterfly’s Burden (2006), which won the Banipal prize from the UK and was a finalist for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation; and in If I Were Another, which won a PEN USA award in 2010. His translation of Ghassan Zaqtan‘s Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me (2012) won the Griffin International Poetry Prize in 2013. His other translations include Amjad Nasser‘s Petra: The Concealed Rose and A Map of Signs and Scents.” PoetryFoundation.org
The Tea and Sage Poem
BY FADY JOUDAH
At a desk made of glass,
In a glass walled-room
With red airport carpet,
An officer asked
My father for fingerprints,
And my father refused,
So another offered him tea
And he sipped it. The teacup
Template for fingerprints.
My father says, it was just
Hot water with a bag.
My father says, in his country,
Because the earth knows
The scent of history,
It gave the people sage.
I like my tea with sage
From my mother’s garden,
Next to the snapdragons
She calls fishmouths
Coming out for air. A remedy
For stomach pains she keeps
In the kitchen where
She always sings.
First, she is Hagar
Boiling water
Where tea is loosened.
Then she drops
In it a pinch of sage
And lets it sit a while.
She tells a story:
The groom arrives late
To his wedding
Wearing only one shoe.
The bride asks him
About the shoe. He tells her
He lost it while jumping
Over a house-wall.
Breaking away from soldiers.
She asks:
Tea with sage
Or tea with mint?
With sage, he says,
Sweet scent, bitter tongue.
She makes it, he drinks.Fady Joudah, “The Tea and Sage Poem” from The Earth in the Attic. Copyright © 2008 by Fady Joudah. Reprinted by permission of Yale University Press.Source: The Earth in the Attic (Yale University Press, 2008)
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The Heart and The Stone #Poetry
I cannot explain to you the heart and the stone
they are configured different but feel same for some
cold smooth and hardened, a heart can become
the stone in the hand that bled out your soul
cast by judgement, by seaside you roam
the heart feels heavy like a weighted stone.
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by Ivo Raeber on Unsplash
#Micropoem #Stone #Heart #Judgement
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Lies. #Poetry
no, i have no taste for it
i breathe a slow breath and
you sigh into the balloon
it expands into a long winded
lie, a tale of deceit, a tattered
worn book you bought with a dime.
cheap lies, dirty minds, foolish
waste lingering behind. don’t
saddle me with this bullshit
you peddle to feed your feeble
spine, a load of bullshit in repeat
eating your young and spitting
out fire to your wicked inward denial.
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by Alexas Fotos from Pexels
#Poetry #Shortverse #Jackass
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I Left #Poetry
I gave up the caring mind
it felt boring and wasteful
Do you ever feel me?
I feel you, and I left.
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
#Micropoem #Poetry
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SHAKESPEARE WAS AN INSOMNIAC #poetry by jay
Shakespeare was an insomniac
A maniac, word-slinging poet
who ate his delights, masticating
his sorrows, while feeding our
wide awake hearts
with his poetic desires.
Shall we in return dance tarantellas
to celebrate you and I here
now manic- and sleepless
in this shared space?
Similar fate, to the master
of the sorrowful sonnet
in constant debate!
©️Jay Mora-Shihadeh
