ISSUE 6 FEATURE

HAND
Fady Joudah

If not the swallows in the morning
Then the smell of guano 

At night permeating her room emanating
From the bridge where protestors ignite vigils
The homeless don’t mind 

She no more believes the devil each time
It appears that it wants her no more a girl
In line for rationed bread
Admonished by women that the soldiers
Have commenced the rapes

The soldiers knocked
And her father said “I’ll shoot you 

If they as much as touch you” she said “If you want
To shoot someone shoot yourself”

Fady Joudah is a Palestinian-American physician, poet, and translator. Joudah translated the final three collections of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish’s work in The Butterfly’s Burden (2006), which won Banipal prize from the UK and was a finalist for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation.