Even with Keys, There's Nowhere to Return
This land absorbs the skins of martyrs.
--Mahmoud Darwish, "Diary of a Palestinian Wound"
How many bodies does it take
to lay the road in white sheets
for the tanks to roll through?
A photo frame isn't big enough
for me to see the whole way.
The horizon shrinks
as it does
and takes the dead with it.
Collapsing with the horizon
are buildings burying
children, their limbs reaching
from the rubble like spider
legs beneath a shoe.
This is what they want. This is
what we won't give them: running
from the dead instead
of carrying them
in our arms, on our shoulders,
on top of our heads so Heaven
can name them, light them.
Come, the gates will say,
there is no war here.
Parents dig for their dead.
The children cry, My only weapons
were these hands.
By Lana Issam Ghannam
Biography:
Lana Issam Ghannam is a first-generation Palestinian-American, born and raised in Central Florida. She received her MFA from the University of Central Florida and is the author of two collections of poetry: Evolution of Stone (Swan Scythe Press, 2021) and Two Tongues (Finishing Line Press, 2019). Ghannam's poetry has appeared in South Dakota Review, The Revolution (Relaunch), Burrow Press, Raleigh Review, Mississippi Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Sukoon, and The Cape Rock, among other journals.
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