Consolation
I tend to notice birds more often
when sorrow savors my heart
every time i walk these familiar streets a stranger
I don’t know what prayer God is letting out
through migration
through rain
through this earthly misery
Last time I cried watching the birds
I wondered if the heavens
have their share of misery too
has the sunbird died
waiting for the sun
up there too
is God looking down at Gaza
praying to some past God
asking him for mercy too?
I beg to Nina’s singing
I wish you could know
what it means
to be me
Sunday morning’s kettle
brewing in urgency
Then you would see and agree
that every man should be
free
——
I lost my mind once
looking at the sky
the birds kept their flight
I wished I was one
Refuge(e)
today I am a refugee
just like I was yesterday
and like I will be tomorrow
but I don’t know why within all my lifetimes
of being one
I never learned how to seek refuge
or pray my shelter into existence
or sing it in my other tongues
the soldiers in my nightmares break me down
each time they take away my father
and even though I knew how to detangle my tongue
I didn’t yell or cry
instead i wrote him in my dreams
between the jasmine trees
or.. poetry aside
at the border
where I waved at him last
now I am your refugee
I am also your Saint
you come to me for holy water
you ask me for an orientalist answer
you want to strain me down to my agony
so my bones won’t hold to build again
I am your refugee
I am also your Savior
without the hands of my ancestors your skies couldn’t have cleared
your trees wouldn’t have been planted
they quenched the soil’s thirst with their blood
that’s how the land remembers their names
Not buried but
held at home
I am a refugee
not your blue eyed fair skinned treasure
my skin is unfamiliar
my tongue
(un)sophisticated (un)civilized
despite the empires
the million-year alphabet
the billion human hands that caressed my land
prophets and all
thousands of songs away
still you ask
So l
script my language with calm
repeat my words like poetry wandering on the kitchen shelf
I extend a tongue or two
one from my ancestors and another from my colonizers
somehow, this time, nothing gets lost between my lips
instead
songs of war dance between my teeth
and I plant gardens of jasmine every spring
and I thread embroidered poems before bed
and when the sun comes up and they ask where my treasures are
I say they hide between the olive trees
in my memory
on the tombstone of my grandmother
in the warmth of family
on a war evening
where bombs chase us
while we chase our breaths on the bathroom floor
in agony, in unity, in grace
with our destiny
Hanaa Ibrahim is a 23 year-old Palestinian poet from Gaza, who moved to the United States at 17 to pursue undergraduate education. Hanaa graduated from Kenyon College in 2021 with a B.A. in Psychology and Spanish, and was previously published in Sumou mag and The Kenyon Review. She started writing in her early teens as a response to the violence her and her family were facing in Gaza and as an outlet for processing trauma. Now based in Baltimore, MD Hanaa works as a neuropsychiatry researcher at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutes, while her family remains back home. “Poetry has been such a healing force throughout my life and I hope it reaches those who need it.”
