(for my father)
In the flameless, English suburb a young girl
opens windows
onto a brick wall. Sheet
of sky enters. No sea, no
horizon, fragments
of men own the neighbourhood.
If you crane your neck into a bird
on the ledge of the tonsillitic balcony
you slept on as a child
you will almost see the sea (there
there) behind the American University.
The young girl climbs from one window
scales carefully the exterior sill
(honeysuckle, Silk Cut Silver,
McDonald’s milkshake halfway up the straw)
and enters again through the other
in an infinite loop
or an ordinary circle
compulsively
she exits and enters
danger and names
this motion being herself.
Rooftops puncture
the expanding lung
of this Better life –
pesto, chicken Kievs, Channel 5
Paula Danziger, Stephen King, Judy Blume
cotton bud, soap scum, shower cap
we peek inside the neighbours’ bathroom
to check if we are human too
to check if we are doing it right
to check why no one
touches anyone
except the people they have sex with
and therein is all their tenderness
spent again the turquoise dome, the emerald guts
of a shimmering life made probable.
Auntie, auntie can I be you?
Chain-smoking Kit Kats
in the bedside pyramid
of duty-free Kents
dangerously nice slipping
out of my mind
and down to the southern border
heavily armed
wires attached to my temples
at a facility in Eastbourne
where the baby brother’s convalescence was funded
where I said yes
come see the Arab
where I said yes
soldiers stopped emerging from toilet bowls
chasing me, chasing me
I drive faster
and faster, all the way to Russia brother
turns the fist
of a Chaunsa mango inside out
Fairuz shucks the oyster
scooping vocal slide
saw dust city boy
puts it to his mouth ignoring
mother while the bombs fall into his pockets
flowing with the American current, Yes
Prime Minister a Sunni
since the National Pact
your life since ’48
kept being waiting for something to stop
so you can return –
home, to work, to your father, to normal, to the dog
left on that patch of earth
in a shaft of settled light cleansing
the fullness of ordinary life catastrophically and
without reservation, Bantustan camouflaged
invasion is a structure
not an event
by any other name expansive,
exterminating, eliminative, extractive
indicative of genocide is not an emotional claim
but a process, the settler
is not an immigrant beholden
to Indigenous laws, decolonisation
has no synonym
apartheid is not a proper noun
it evades and erases its own name
‘apartheid’ ‘apartheid’ ‘[ ]’
but re/names with impunity streets
and sand dunes casually
but targeted as you cower
in the roofless kitchen
your arms up mute child
pins the racist boss against the wall deferentially
hotboxxing tiny cars off the M25
listening to Nick, to Geoff
watching Porridge under the ungrateful cubicle
slurping fat eels
east of the City’s
coke dripping body
carried over your shoulder and out of the desert
and down to the river
where I saw my well
irrigated fromness at last
ever thirsty farmers in the Jordan Valley
their water siphoned and redirected into
a single settlement peach
contains 140 litres of virtual water
appropriated from Palestinians
pitching from behind a burning car
in West Beirut a Molotov cocktail in an arc
on the trading room floor
gestures towards
wealthy classmates’ used-once textbooks for sale
cream skimmed for the street cats
you send me pictures of
‘thought of Olive’
Zaytooneh, of course the Europeans
have made a charity for the cats here
while the legless
beg on the curbed stub of national debt
vacationing at a permanent distance
from tear gas Made in France by SAE Alestex
hurled also at the gilets jaunes
in this obscene connection
cannisters, CM6 grenades,
G1 ‘random motion’ grenades
impossible to pick up and throw back
loosen up you think everything is racist!
Annihilation, exploitation,
the sand under my desk,
the words you hear
when they think they are alone
or you are one of them palely
photocopying hot pink worksheets
in a West London basement
dumbstruck at the words
at the impressed guffaws
at the infected gall of saying it
come on we were all thinking it
doubly my jaw at the word
whose wasp drew
From being put beside
the worst of all and thus
slurred twice, no, squared
up to the fury
which protects the love
strategically opaque
silent at is core free
to yell ‘Lawrence!’ at Englishmen
with t-shirts on their heads in the summer
free to sell our labour power
free to be part of this glorious System
free to forget return
free to know the worth of our selves
(do we ever mean the same thing with
the most important words?)
but never to a lover –
on our knees in bathrooms internationally
dependent on a disguise of sovereignty
of nation French accented father
I’ve never had a decent pomelo in Great Britain
what do they do with all that water?
We play nice for the American tap USAID! USAID!
store it in rooftop tanks
for IDF soldiers to piss in next door
collude in the Dead Sea’s contraction
mine for potash and magnesium
7000 sinkholes and counting,
surface almost halved since ’76,
300km squared of seabed exposed
his myth blooms beneath
the West Bank Mountain
Aquifier diverts 80% of
Ramallah’s rain
his citrus orchards
his swimming pools
an orange ball thunking
in a summer palm
in a city wetter than London
listener heed your fantasy
there is more blood than water in Gaza today
scarcity is not evenly distributed
when Mekoret charges a West Bank
Palestinian more than a settler
on their knees and warring neighbours in 18 sects
plus immigrants, domestic workers and labourers
haram, pity keeps the object object
12 men in 1 room as long
as there is never a cloud in my glass fighting
our own baby girl
keep your love of women to yourself
(but between you and me there was
a lesbian in the family once – )
they returned to their quiet yellow cheese,
and glinting rose gardens
their military avenues slick
with marron glacé and left us this combustible Paris
restructured child
you are floating through dusky pink
taupe-ish pre-dark-web-MDMA, thin-armed
and improvising nutrition
at High Easter, St Faith’s Road, SE24
where the kitchen sky was ten thousand swifts
to smooth the hair of
after they puke into an Iceland bag
on the top bunk
sleeping in a pile
at 175 Coldharbour Lane
rolling backwards in through the first floor window, child
when will you come back?
The chicken is gathering dust
your tonsils are ringing
in love and dedicated
primarily to deciphering how the lilacy
pastel of hydrangeas can also be electric
Mother
can’t you see I am busy
deciphering how the lilacy
pastel of hydrangeas can also be electric?
Mother
I am learning to see
have you ever seen
a bluebell wood Mother these English
taught me flannels and butter,
language and forests Mother
when was the last time
you came here in Spring?
You think it is always one colour, a desert
sad, dry you deny it (me) (you)
seeing only the impression of a season
then running, child
you have to be inside the System!
Enjoy your flexible passport
I cannot tell you how many passports I have striven for
but you were born a citizen (not alien, not refugee)
of this still world
before the law
changed fully documented ingrate
as if it were a universal category: citizen
occupied resident, refugee, foreigner,
immigrant, just never a national
when nation is race concealed
and race is the colonial difference on which
modernity is built
up stand out blend in slide
into the schema of a luxury
and stop taking everything so seriously!
Perhaps you were right because here
I am here a Palestinian first or nothing!