Photograph of a Prison Journalist
Even in photographs our eyes danced
Perigee
An Incarcerated Mail Order Bride
You're famous ,
in your world,
maybe I am--taboo,
Queen Restored
I saw Queen Hephzibah
in the wilderness the other day.
I was a little befuddled because
I thought she had lost her way.
Life Cycles
My mother says we’re strapped to a cosmic wheel, and you can’t just press a start button and expect to escape suffering. But Ama takes me on Sundays, and we run through the aisles laughing, flinging open the doors to every machine, witnessing rebirth: a crow gushing out like ink, a doe climbing out on wobbly legs, an octopus blended into jelly.
I try saying a prayer for a NICU baby
I hear her saying the Lord’s prayer to them while they squirm and bat away the sticky readers on their little bodies. she is gentle. she has the patience only a mother could have. no matter how many times her children have kicked at her stomach and cried she has always come back to nurture them. she smiles at them and says, “Amen.”
Volcanic Vigils
My father went whole and alone before / I carried the parts of my mother
Queer Visions: Capturing Life and Identity in Palestine
I don’t seek safety from police or other state authorities as a queer Palestinian man. Instead, I negotiate my existence in my own community and society. I am an expert on my people, I come from them, and that, no one can underestimate.
Good Mourning Palestine
Gooood Mourning Pa-les-tiiiiiiiiiine! Hey, this is not a test, this is rocks and stones. Time to rock it from Masaffer Yata to Jerusalem. Is that me or does that sound like a Mahmoud Darwish poem?
Apogee Issue 19 Out Now
Dear Apogee readers, Welcome to Issue 19. We offer this issue as a site of gathering, a site of connection. Here, you will find new visions of a survivable collective future, accounting for the horrors of the present and rejecting complacency.
Hopscotch
There amongst weeds and wildflowers grown higher than my head–there, hidden from plain sight in this vacant lot amid burnt-out buildings, I join a troop of secret girls, accepted without question as one of their own.