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Human expression is never orderly.
​It is a space of disruption.To let ourselves express means to be vulnerable.​It means to invert syntax so as to articulate the visceral. 

I n v e r t e d    S y n t a x

Picture

​​The Palestinian Refugee’s PowerPoint

Philip Metres 
Mobile Friendly Version
Mobile-Friendly Version
--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.
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. 
​

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).”     ​

Read Philip Metres’s “Fractured (like Chandeliers)” and “To Shiva as Lord of the Dance in the Circle of Fire (the Oscillating Universe)” in Inverted Syntax’s January print issue.

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  • The Fissured Tongue Series
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    • We Are All Artists Exhibit
      • Video Compilation FirehouseArt Center Postcard Exhibit
      • Firehouse Exhibitors 2022
        • Churnage FirehouseArt Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Daniel Staub Weinberg Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Genevieve Rose Barr Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Eva Schultz Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
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        • D Allen Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
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        • Josh Lefkowitz Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Carolyn Adams Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
      • We Are All Artists Exhibit Guide
      • We are All Artists Submission Form Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit