Refugee
By Remi Kanazi
I.
she has never
seen the sea
sunlight imprinted
on her father's skin
waves crashing
at his feet
smile tattooed
underneath boyish grin
snapping pictures
with closing eyelids
her father's face
flush on recollection
the same waves that had
clenched like an angry jaw
at his mother pushed him
forward like a train car
watched his neighbor drown
tears streaming
eyes connecting
screams muffled
as inhalation
suffocated lungs
muscles weary
skin pruning
barely a boy
knowing he would
never return
his neighbor
an older man
born in Akka
looked dapper
at dinner parties
looked helpless that day
his body revolting
against death
a pool intent
on swallowing him
so many stroking
to get on boats departing
who'd have known this gulf
would be their deathbed
II.
she has been beaten
ID checked
body thrown to the ground
fists and feet pummeled
fractured hip, shoulder broken
heart, too many times
tear gas inscribed on her lungs
she wrote back on her breath
that the canister's defeat is near
III.
these fields are ours
she told me
before the Europeans
and Brooklynites
before the swimming pools
army jeeps and barbed wire
before the talks, roadmaps
and Swiss cheese plans
before declarations rewrote history
those hills met footprints
and that can't be erased
like village massacres
can't be erased
like broken bones policies
can't be erased
like the screams ringing
in her father's ears
can't be erased
we are the boat
returning to dock
we are the footprints
on the northern trail
we are the iron
coloring the soil
we cannot
be erased
Copyright Credit: Remi Kanazi, "Nothing to Worry About" from Before the Next Bomb Drops: Rising Up from Brooklyn to Palestine. Copyright © 2015 by Remi Kanazi. Reprinted by permission of Haymarket Books.
Source: Before the Next Bomb Drops: Rising Up from Brooklyn to Palestine (Haymarket Books, 2015)