The Palestinian Refugee’s PowerPointPhilip Metres
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--for Nahida Halaby Gordon
But she doesn’t look like a refugee, my student said, eyeing
her grandmotherly cardigan, her gray-black coif and new laptop.
her grandmotherly cardigan, her gray-black coif and new laptop.
I’ve asked her to tell her story, but on her PowerPoint,
It is 1948. I am nine. I’ll tell you only what I know
she’s mired in last century, laserpointing Balfour & Rothschild, Sykes & Picot,
I know: a pain behind my ribs when I cast back
the diminishing green of Palestine on map after digital map
into the river of remember. Tremor of explosion
as if, clicking past resolutions & broken accords, trying to piece together
near the town center, January 4, & my father there, & now
a shrapneled map, a forensic scientist examining her own body, trying to explain
in the bathroom, his black hair ash-white, my mother combing out the stones,
& gathering her strength to touch the hurting place,
her hand quaking, his blue suit chalk-white, his silk tie
& my sophomores, soporific from history, slip into a dream
soaked red, & I’m asking why, why,
or glance at their screens, seeing or not seeing
years later, his hand still holding the last Haganah leaflet
what it takes her to return
fallen from the sky.
It is 1948. I am nine. I’ll tell you only what I know
she’s mired in last century, laserpointing Balfour & Rothschild, Sykes & Picot,
I know: a pain behind my ribs when I cast back
the diminishing green of Palestine on map after digital map
into the river of remember. Tremor of explosion
as if, clicking past resolutions & broken accords, trying to piece together
near the town center, January 4, & my father there, & now
a shrapneled map, a forensic scientist examining her own body, trying to explain
in the bathroom, his black hair ash-white, my mother combing out the stones,
& gathering her strength to touch the hurting place,
her hand quaking, his blue suit chalk-white, his silk tie
& my sophomores, soporific from history, slip into a dream
soaked red, & I’m asking why, why,
or glance at their screens, seeing or not seeing
years later, his hand still holding the last Haganah leaflet
what it takes her to return
fallen from the sky.
Philip Metres is the author of ten books, including Shrapnel Maps (forthcoming 2020), The Sound of Listening (essays, 2018), Sand Opera (poems, 2015), Pictures at an Exhibition (poems, 2016), I Burned at the Feast: Selected Poems of Arseny Tarkovsky (translations 2015), and others. His work has garnered a Lannan fellowship, two NEAs, six Ohio Arts Council Grants, the Hunt Prize, the Beatrice Hawley Award, two Arab American Book Awards, the Watson Fellowship, the Creative Workforce Fellowship, and the Cleveland Arts Prize. He is professor of English and director of the Peace, Justice, and Human Rights program at John Carroll University. http://www.philipmetres.com
About the work: “The two poems are from a poetic sequence to be published in chapbook form by Diode Editions in 2019 as Returning to Jaffa. The sequence is a docupoetic inquiry into the mystery of what happened to Palestine’s most populous city and its municipal archives during the Nakba in 1948. Working with vintage postcards, Haganah leaflets, and personal photographs, Returning to Jaffa tells the story of one former resident of Jaffa, Nahida Halaby Gordon, a Palestinian who fled her native land during 1948, and who periodically returns to visit her childhood home confiscated by Israel after the war. This sequence will also be part of Shrapnel Maps (Copper Canyon 2020).”
