letters to palestine
salute youth 
martyrs

and the mantras
of concrete children 

see them twist
midair 
escaping snipers 
and rubber bullets

fistfuls of stone
clenched between playground
scars and lifetime
sentences 

their words compare 
lucid visions 

mightier than
the pull of earth’s 
orbit 

here,
the artist’s fate is
always,

prison 

invoke
fieldnotes of a 
catastrophe,
normalized 

last time i checked,
there was nothing normal 
about occupation 

break the news
the same way we break 
bread 

fiercely 
and urgently,

we are coming out of hiding
from the attic’s cell
upstairs 

along with the archives
of our collective 
memory.

– for my uncle, wallid al-hallis 

lh 
apr 2022