"During night airstrikes, all of us turned
into stones"
poet Mosab Abu Tohu of Gaza, Palestine
from page 86 in his recent riveting book
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| 2022 copyright |
Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet, short story writer, and essayist from Gaza. Abu Toha is the author of Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza (2022,
City Lights), which won a 2022 Palestine Book Award. Abu Toha is the
founder of the Edward Said Library, and from 2019 to 2020, he was a
visiting poet and librarian-in-residence at Harvard University.
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| Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet, short story writer, and essayist from Gaza |
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Mouth Still Open
Someone’s mouth is still open. He hadn’t finished yawning
when shrapnel
pierced
through
his chest,
stung his
heart.
No wind
could
stop the
flying pieces
of shrapnel. Even
the sparrow on the lemon tree nearby wondered how they
could
move
with
no
wings
Copyright © 2022 by Mosab Abu Toha. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 15, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.
Update on Mosab Abu Toha: he has been released by the Israeli army. Israeli soldiers beat him and he getting medical treatment now and with his family.
ReplyDelete2nd update from Mosab Abu Toha
ReplyDelete@MosabAbuToha
I’m safe but still have pain in nose and teeth after being beaten by Israeli army.
I gave them all my family’s passports, including my American son’s but they didn’t return anything. Also my clothes & my children’s were taken and not returned to me. No wallet, money, credit cards
What is Home?
ReplyDeleteMosab Abu Toha
What is home:
it is the shade of trees on my way to school
before they were uprooted.
It is my grandparents’ black-and-white wedding
photo before the walls crumbled.
It is my uncle’s prayer rug, where dozens of ants
slept on wintry nights, before it was looted and
put in a museum.
It is the oven my mother used to bake bread and
roast chicken before a bomb reduced our house
to ashes.
It is the café where I watched football matches
and played—
My child stops me: Can a four-letter word hold
all of these?
From Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear by Mosab Abu Taha. Copyright © 2022 by Mosab Abu Taha. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC, on behalf of City Lights Publishers. https://poets.org/poem/what-home