Passages Marked
Two holes ghost the top of the page, as if it punched for a legal file.
Someone pounded out the agreement on a manual. Evidence:
Stiff keys. Every letter partially inked. Evidence:
Someone’s hands opened, fingers tapping
Any person as Amy person.
Back then we lived in the land of the Bible as though it happened yesterday
Simon the Tanner’s shop a short walk from our house
The page creased into three, each crease wide
because of the stench, tanning was considered unclean, but Peter stayed
“…who wishes to return to Jaffa may apply…”
as if opened and read and showed to others
not afraid of taking a meal from one considered an outcast
“…after their bonda fides have been proved…”
certain passages marked with pink pen
and later, visiting a Roman centurion, the Spirit of the Lord would come to Peter
“…must be kept safely, and in good condition…”
and folded again, many times, carried carefully across borders
that no one could stand in the way of anyone baptized with water
and opened again
Ode to the Oranges of Jaffa
For you’re oval & thick-peeled, easy
to remove. For you’re seedless & tough
skinned & suitable for export.
For your juice starts sweet, then runs
bitter. For naranj comes from Sanskrit,
meaning “fruit like elephants.” Memory
the earth you come from, & perfume
the whole city, when wind pages through
your leaves. For by 1845, thirty-eight million
shipped to farther shores. Then symbol
of Arab-Jewish cooperation, before the war,
then orange engine of the new Israel.
For the last Jew to grow them now says, to cut
the orchard down would be to cut out my heart.
A Tour of Deir Yassin as Broken Ghazal
Activists carried the names of 100 in Deir Yassin.
Prior to the massacre, we were on good terms with the Jews in Givat Shaul. We shared food,
celebrated together, paid condolences to one another, babysat for each other in Deir Yassin.
The majority of the women, children or elderly despite time
were in Deir Yassin
My grandmother’s cousin, Naziha Radwan, was six . She survived by
covering in her grandmother’s blood, hiding beneath stiffened and pretending to
be
the remnants of cemetery, bulldozed in the 0s.
Two days before “Death to Arabs” painted on
in Deir Yassin
Tell the soldiers: you have made history in Israel with your attack and your conquest….
As in Deir Yassin,
so everywhere, we will attack and smite the enemy. God, Thou has chosen us for conquest.
An elderly man joined the tour and described Yair Zaban had been
in Deir Yassin
the day after, removing Palestinian ,
the most difficult thing I had done in my life. Deir Yassin
is now
shopping centers, bus depots, religious Jewish schools, a psychiatric hospital
of Givat Shaul Bet and