Pianissimo
Should you say it softly/for those who linger within the vowels/there’s precedent/in tajweed the custom/is incantatory/though you don’t/name it track/for those who
rely/six beats for each lengthy/alef/like lifting a prayer as much as the sky/like hoisting
a physique above the ruins/and the arms raised up in reward/in grieving/reward/for those who
select/a softer phrase right here/learn a poem about/love as an alternative/for those who add the phrase/if
you loosen the grip/for those who say it/ in Arabic/say it in Arabic/in Arabic whisper/select
the one which rhymes/even when /it’s reserved for the useless/for those who sing/sing it a little bit/the
crowd begging/the sky/begging the collapsed/begging the earth to cease caving
in/blessing the child delivered/once more/from the rubble/beseeching the partitions/the gang
passing the new child hand over hand over/heads garlanded in concrete mud/Allahu
Akbar at all times/translated as indictment/as an alternative say/one thing delicate/stretch the
syllables/allow us to hear
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is a poet, essayist, and translator. She is the writer of three books of poetry: Water & Salt, winner of the 2018 Washington State Ebook Award; 2023’s Kaan and Her Sisters, from Trio Home Press; and One thing About Dwelling, which received the 2022 Akron Poetry Prize and was revealed by the College of Akron Press this 12 months. Her work has been revealed or is forthcoming in journals together with Michigan Quarterly Overview, the Nation, Poetry, and Prairie Schooner. She was the 2022 curator of the interpretation sequence “Poems from Palestine” on the Baffler journal. She is at the moment curating an everyday function on Palestinian writing at Phrases With out Borders, entitled “Towards Silence.”
