Still life.
For those of you who don't know, I am a Palestinian-American.
And for those of you who don't care.
You write your name on unstained glass
so you're either broken or seen through.
When it came time for the affidavit
the panel asked, how much art over the blood of strangers
the word mentioned the weather and the sleepers
under the weather.
All this was preceded by tension enzymatic to the hills
behind us and the forests ahead where children don't
sleep in resting tremor and shelling
the Earth is a pomegranate.
A helmet, ocher or copper, sinks in buoyant salt water,
divers seek its womb despite its dura mater
and it hangs on trees like pregnant mistletoes.
I'll stand next to one and have my German lover remember me
on a Mediterranean island though she would eventually
wed an Israeli once she'd realized
what she wanted from life.
A mother of two.
On the nose of Mount Carmel where my wife's father was born
driven out.
My father's hands depearl the fruit.
In a few minutes, add a drop of rosewater,
some shredded coconut for us to gather around him.
He will lead his grandchildren out,
transfer bundles of pine branches in the yard
to where his tomatoes and cucumbers grow in summer.
Let them gather the dried pine needles forever, he says.
They will refuse to believe the fire dies.
And they will listen to his fire on a cold night
in a forest of eucalyptus trees that the British
had planted as natural reserve outside Gaza.