‘I Am You’ by Dr. Refaat Alareer

This is not a poem.

This is a curfew a bruise a bulldozer

a border.

a road map and a rock ingrained in a small boy’s hand.

This not a poem.

This is a gun against a fist. This is memory rubbing against memory

two victims squeezing between a land and many voices

straddling the dead sea of selective memory, selective morality

This is not a poem- this is me

Running my fingers through jewish questions that grow like old stubborn

weeds holding onto the land

Knees deep in shame

Plowing through the human psyche , raking history like a tired farmer

This is not a poem- this is my people,

hungry wolves looking for prey

faces similar to my own

embracing guns like a lover

our shame sprawled out like a cemetery

Politics is not a ghost

Or a word lingering in dusty history books.

it does not sit with its back sitting up straight on nails on professor’s

tongues.

Politics is reality spread thinly like day old butter across the heart and into

hungry mouths

Poltics cannot be washed down by a metaphor

No simile can take away the dead in Gaza

No syllables stringed together can give justice to a people under siege

This is not a poem- this is a blanket thrown over a cycle of violence

A conflict cut cut open with a serrated knife

My arms wave like a frantic flag

this is not a poem. this is a shame as big as a country.

as striking as a sniper

no poem could ever fill hunger

or wipe off the intricacies of war

this is a boy wanting to play ball under a curfew over a siege wanting to

throw and catch through the beat and the beaten

this is the elder’s memories seeping through the checkpoints of our history

sinking in my blood

weighing me down like a cutting stone

rotting in my teeth and sweating from the earth

this is not a poem this is political theses turning into corpses.

sour olives rubbing against my tongue.

This is not a poem.

This is my grandmother.

81 but 16 looking at death in the face

stuck in memory, being carried from camp to camp

her star of David piercing her adolescence.

my grandma sleeps with one eye open

her heart is bent over like a swastika

this is not a reason to burn another people to ashes

to rip them of what we were ripped of

this is not a poem- this is my grandma pulling my judaism out of me with

her teeth.

my convictions firm as all the stones of the earth weighing on your back

this is me

scared

with a cry a plea a beg a hope a

and the need to speak with bullets filling my mouth.

this is not a poem

this is me

at the border to my culture.

At the checkpoint to my people.

I need more than a witness

I need more than this belly to lay at the feet of a soldier .

more than these legs to push the bulldozer. To open the dialogue

To ground my people

I have only these lungs to open up like a newborn bird

only my heart to bomb the world

only these metaphors

this is just a poem

scared

opened up like a torah

read backwards.

This is dirty laundry

mine

and every Jew scattered across the earth holding

memory fear and security under our fingertips

Have we got a bullet lodged in our memory?

Have we?

Were we not once refugees?

Were we not once in ghettoes,

Lined up to be shot like sick cattle?

Does our history not know what it feels like to look into the barrel of a gun?

this is not a poem

this is a priority

exposed

This Passover, who reclines?
Only the dead, their cupped hands filling slowly
with the red wine of war. We are not free.
The blood on the doorposts does not protect anyone.

They say that other country over there
dim blue in the twilight
farther than the orange stars exploding over our roofs
is called peace.

The bread of affliction snaps in our hands like bones,
is dust in our mouths. This bitterness brings tears to our eyes.
The figs and apples are sour. We have many more
than four questions. We dip and dip,
salt stinging our fingers.
Unbearable griefs braided into a rope so tight
we can hardly breathe,
Whether we bless or curse,
this is captivity.
We would cross the water if we knew how.
Everyone blames everyone else for barring the way.

Listen, they say there is honey swelling in golden combs, over there,
dates as sweet and brown as lovers’ cheekbones,
bread as fragrant as rest,
but the turbulent water will not part for us.
We’ve lost the trick of it.

Back then, one man’s faith opened the way.
He stepped in, we were released, our enemies drowned.

This time we’re tied at the ankles.
We cannot cross until we carry each other,
all of us refugees, all of us prophets.

No more taking turns on history’s wheel,
trying to collect old debts no-one can pay.
The sea will not open that way.

This time that country
is what we promise each other,
our rage pressed cheek to cheek
until tears flood the space between,
until there are no enemies left,
because this time no one will be left to drown
and all of us must be chosen.
This time it’s all of us or none.