alalehbanu
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It’s What They Say
April 7th, 2026, 17:45, Landskrona, Sweden Written in response to the President of the United States’ threats today. With notes based on Annie Jacobsen’s book, Nuclear War. They say your skin melts. And your clothes. And your shoes. Melt right off. And your insides become your outsides. I think of their pretty olive skin. Hers…
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We had lives.
We had lives. Palestinian ones. In the silk grass curls tousled in the wind the smell of the sea Yemeni ones. Sitting on chairs too small for us a coffee and a friend a tasbih of cold carnelian between rough fingers We had lives. Syrian lives. Fresh tobacco in a crowded cafe hovering above a…
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The Doomsday Clock
Coleridge’s clock made of marble and of stone with a little man who strikes the hour Azrael in his cloak of rag and bone. ‘Beware! Beware!’ he cries from the top of the stair. High up in the Great Chamber of a fine country manor, a rickety old elevator will take you there. They’ve built…
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West Asians in America
We flee the Empire’s breath of fire and run into its mouth for shelter. Once swallowed, we take a seat in the Monster’s belly and watch from his beady little television eyes as our loved ones who are left behind burn and die. And so it is that we exchange our vulnerability for culpability. The…
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A Prayer to the Prince of Canaan
Inspired by Hans Christian Anderson’s ‘The Phoenix Bird’ There is a little egg buried in the depths of the rubble. Born out of the blood of the very first rose that fell on that very first day, under a sky alight with the sins of these self-anointed gods it trembles here now in its nest…
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Love Poem to Gaza
I have loved you. I have let your branches wrap their olive arms around my arms I have found myself bloodied in your nets, burning in your music I have forgotten I was there. I have forgotten I was here. It was night. We built a ship. And sailed the flood. And great whales in…
al-majus 