BATOOL ABU AKLEEN
The Ice Cream Van
The ice cream man cries:
corpses for sale
all around the streets
no grave buys them
the corpses are melting
he cries again: corpses for sale
no answer.
The dogs buy them at bargain prices
they cry out for more.
The ice cream man has promised
he’ll soon refill the van
and give them
new corpses as frosty fresh
as the city.
If we swapped eyes
Fear runs up my spine
holds my bridle
& tightens it
I don’t release any sound
but he feels his way inside me.
He beats me with a whip he’s made
with leather from his previous mule.
I don’t cry
or move.
He got off my back
& stood in front of me
he uprooted his eyes and mine
& swapped them around.
I saw the fear in his eyes
he saw the frailty in my eyes
then we cried together.
To My First Father, the Sea
Take me to my father
Strip off my man-made cells
Delete my existence
I am like you
Shaking like rough waves
That wait for the Titanic ship so as to destroy it.
We are one
Or two
Looking at everything from out the world’s window
Until it turns salty blue
So pure
Wild
Needs a lot of weeping and longing
Scared blue.
I am the sea’s daughter and you are my father
We don’t resemble the mountain’s height and solidity
We are mixed together
Life is sweeping us away from life
It doesn’t understand that we prefer drowning
So we drown until they find us embalmed
We are endless, oh all-embracing
You chew me up
I melt inside you
Then my mother calls me
And you answer:
Your daughter is here, in the sea.
So I become the girl you devour
The one nobody but you can recognize
And no one but my mother knows the legend.
I am not roaming you
I am searching within and inside you
Swallow me and take me
as if you’re sweeping an escaping shellfish to the shore.
Take me and let us become one.
Place me on Akka’s wall
Or get me one of its stones
Let’s comb the hair of Haifa’s beautiful daughters
And steal sycamore and orange from one of its farmers’ orchard.
Take me to eternity
Is eternity fulfilled when I fall?
Friend, who says you’re calm is a liar, even in the scorching days of September.
I am scared of you
Calm is frenzy and revolution
And you are a rebel, my friend
A massive one.
There is no mirror for the world, nor for me
But in a way you are me.
You are my reflections
Take me and embrace my heart with January’s calm, September’s turmoil.
Hold my blood
Stroke it
Then hurl it into yourself
You’ll become a human, and I’ll become a sea. Am I selfish, my friend?
Are you selfish for being my voiceless revolution,
my first love, my first home and my first freedom?
Are we selfish for banishing the world from our true story?
The world is a liar
You and I are honest
Pure like children
Melancholy—a forest amputated of her trees who wept over her misfortune
And decided to move into a sea,
Just like me.
Oh, how close you are
Far and out of reach.
They don’t take me to you, nor do you ask after me!
Why did you give me up, why didn’t you turn me into a sea?
Did you dread being made out of flesh and fresh blood?
I’ll run away holding my mother’s fear in my heart,
And I’ll come back to you.
Slap me with your silence
Then throw me away
I’ll shriek
You’ll shriek
So the sea’s daughter gets back to her father’s arms.
(P.S.: These 3 poems have been translated by the author and Cristina Viti.)
This is how I cook my grief
I pick fresh hearts from the street
The most defeated ones
With nimble fingers, I steal the tears
I fill rusted sardine tins with the smell of sorrow.
Mothers’ glances cling tightly to their eyes
But I snatch them swiftly, because I resemble their children.
In a copper pot,
I boil what I stole
And add blood that hasn't absorbed
And sawdust from a coffin that was meant as the door to his new home
I pour the mixture into my heart
Until it blackens
This is how I cook my grief.
End the war
End…
A trill escapes from my mother's mouth
End…
A smile sprouts from my father's lips
End…
Little feet dance
End…
The displaced embrace
End…
Tears flow from my eyeballs
End…
My heart expands
End…
A house collapses
End…
The Apache shoots
End…
A martyr falls
End…
The ambulance grows louder
End…
Tears flow from my eyeballs
End…
My heart contracts
The broadcaster continues:
End to negotiations
The War continues
Period.
(Translated by Yasmin Zaher)
Short Bio: Batool Abu Akleen is a Palestinian poet and painter whose work transcends borders. At 15, she won the Barjeel Prize for her poignant poem I Didn’t Steal the Cloud. Displaced from Gaza City after October 7, 2023, Batool continues to write and share her powerful poetry, reflecting resilience and displacement. Her poetry has been translated into multiple languages, including Italian and English, and has been published in renowned magazines worldwide. Currently, she serves as the Poet in Residence with Modern Poetry in Translation (MPT). Those poems are part of her forthcoming poetry collection, to be published next year by Tenement Press, England.
AMNA SOLIMAN
Untitled 1
Our destiny is to stay home
trapped in this siege…
We don’t stop to wipe the home’s tears, to bandage its wounds,
to comfort its heart from the madness explosions and shooting that didn’t stop
for ten days
A home is a soul,
and my soul is connected to my father's home.
Untitled 2
I don't know, what I may do with my mother's fears...
Bombs are hitting the boundaries of home,
I turned to her face to see something like an electric shock
caused her white hair to straighten up…
Military machines are howling next to our door
to find out if my mother's blood is frozen in her arteries…
Planes and tanks are shooting without mercy,
forcing the last birds to leave,
Only to find my mother's tears are frozen.
She remains silent…
Then suddenly says, “We are going to meet Mohammed soon.”
Ugly fear, stay away from my mother
And leave what is left in her safe.
FEDAA ZEYAD
To the Murdered Children
We want them with us
all those children whose parts we are collecting now.
We won't reprimand them for a mistake in dictation
We will buy them many pencils, notebooks, colored button-shirts and dresses spinning during the school celebrations.
They have papers in class waiting for the first letter of their first line
They have seats in the schools
They have their turn in the line for the supermarket
They have candies on the shelf of the grocery store
And new clothes in the feast market
We want their fuss in the house yard
We won’t reprimand them for breaking a plate in the house saloon
We won’t yell at them for being careless
And for losing their ball
And for the theft of their slippers from the mosque’s door
We want them among us to play with the grandmothers’ houses
To ruin her furniture and break her teacup
We want them to cuddle in the aunts’ laps
And join the aunts in the wedding court
To dance
To make a dabka
To scream in the neighbourhood street
Let their screams break the trees’ branches
We want them among us
Death doesn’t take them
We want them in the house
In the street
In the market
In the library
In the park
And on the feast swings.
And in every corner of the country.
Don’t take them to death
We want them all
All as one body playing in the city!
(October / 2023)
My martyred friends
My martyred friends
My martyred brothers
My martyred children
My martyred beautiful girlfriends
My martyred nice neighbors
They are circulating your names
Writing it in front of me
Placing it on my eyes
Feeding it to my mouth
Hitting my chest with it
And placing it in my hand
I know you
I know you
They think I don’t know you because I’m not crying for you
But I carry you with me, martyr after martyr in my bags
And when we are rescued, if rescued,
You will wake up
And I will blow the bomb dust from your hair
And will march in your funeral
And will cry for you every time the raindrops
And every time the sea pulls over its hand
And every time the cities fall asleep
And every time the mothers scream for their children lost in the crowd.
Grief for you will stretch over all tables
And in all the school classes
And in the feast markets
And in all the rescue prayers
And in every lock of hair
And in all the skin pores.
Sleep now for us
Our excuse is your current absence
So excuse our swift mourning for you
And when it is over, you will wake up to witness our extensive grief, my dear martyred loved ones.
(October/2023)
Click here to find Outlook's 11 January 2025 issue 'War and Peace.'
