It’s vacant here except for hundreds of stone boxes
above a yellow floor of sand.
No trees anywhere for a bird to perch on.
Inside each box, two hands,
or maybe one,
or maybe no hands;
one leg, two legs
or maybe no legs;
a head, or none; a chest,
or a smashed one;
or none at all.

All of the body parts
we learnt about at school
or touched with love.
A box may fit the size of a corpse.
It may be bigger. It could be empty.

My grandfather, I don’t know where your grave is,
but your wheelchair is surely not inside.
It must’ve rusted or was sold as steel and plastic.

My brother, I know you’re sleeping in one,
but I’ve never searched for it.
Not sure if I will.
Your heavy breathing once
led me to your place when electricity was cut.
But not anymore.
I cannot tell if they inscribed your name
on your gravestone, if there is
a gravestone, if you’re still in your grave.
I’m not sure. You could be watching us,
watching me
writing this.

But what is this?
Not a poem.
This may be a gravestone
for someone not yet born.

by Mosab Abu Toha

The Last Kiss
On the way to the battlefield

At the door of a train
heading to the next station
before the battlefield,
her hands wrap around the back
of his neck.

(soldiers behind
on seats
or standing
someone sending a goodbye
text message
to a distant relative,
someone checking they still have
a family photo
a mother has put
in the jacket’s inner pocket.)

the young wife
still at the door of the train
smells her husband
smiles as she glimpses the lipstick
below his earlobe
from last night.
No textbooks or notebooks
no pencils or erasers in his backpack.
Only a toothpaste and a comb,
a few jet–black hairs from her,
a sandwich and a book of prayers,
and a list of names
they both brainstormed
for their to–be–born baby.
Around his neck, a scarf she bought
on his 30th birthday.
Around his wrist
a watch he kept from school years.

She kisses him, his cap hides
her tearful eyes.
“The doors are shutting soon. Beware!”
A voice of an old man comes out
through the train’s speaker.
And the young man’s voice is never heard
again.

by Mosab Abu Toha

Thanks
After Yusef Komunyakaa

Thanks to my mother always, but
especially when she called for me,
for me to join them at the table,
just seconds before shrapnel
cut through the window glass
where I stood to watch distant air strikes.
My mother’s voice, the magnet of my life,
swayed my head just in time.
Plumes of smoke choked the neighborhood.
It was night and when we ran into the street,
and Mother had left the cake in the oven. We smelled
the bomb smoke with burnt chocolate
and strawberry of the cake.

And thanks to the huge clock tower
which saved my life. I was crossing the street}
and my head, glued to my phone,
never heeded the honk of cars
or the wheels of vans
screeching onto the rough tarmac.
That bell tolled for me.
Sorry Death, but it was the eve of my birthday
and sorry Hemingway to answer your title
that way.

by Miho Nonaka

Then I stepped into a river
I didn’t know existed. Sand
and silt between my toes, water
reaching my calves. Leaves
rustled, so many waves of green
glinting like swords on both sides
of the river. I was not alone
as I waded deeper, water now
lapping my thighs, and the wind,
the river, and birds seemed to say,
ultimately, what I ever wanted to
become did not matter. The milk
had come in the night before —
my unshapely left breast dripping
with such functional beauty.
I was three times as old as Mary
when she delivered the Son of Man.
The wind loosened my hair, turning
the river’s surface into so many
silver combs. The child heavy
in my arms as he started sleeping
in earnest, his hands in tight balls.
Above us, the clouds drifted,
on the banks, the leaves darkened
and grew bright again. The wind
had led me through water
that was now up to the waist.
What pierced me then was neither
the light, nor the chill of water,
nor fear, nor desire, but a sudden
realization that in this world,
helplessness is not unbeautiful.