What does he have to fear?

These poems display the health and vitality of a literature that has already proved to be a potent medium for self-expression, a grounds for linguistic experimentation, and an important declaration of autonomy itself.

I proceeded with caution / Like a marble inching toward the line

silence sullen-faced fate reaches my ears

The intensity of the parent-child relationship, with its high emotional stakes, life-and-death responsibility, and inescapable physical proximity, makes for powerful stories.

This issue is not a departure but a continuation.

A strange thing began to happen in the country.

In the current environment of relentless political strife . . . debate deteriorates into name-calling; partisans morph into zealots, complex issues are reduced to binary terms, and hostility seethes just beneath the surface.

Most massacres occurred after Friday prayers.

The narrative threads that weave through the last ten years tell a tale in themselves.

I just want to know one thing: how would it feel to hold your hand?

When they torched my poems they burned me along with them

He said they’d taken Omar away naked.

Their work is deeply entangled with the extreme politics of the context in which they’ve grown up and lived.

You pour water onto the severed head once again.

In short, the ongoing war in Syria is not a revolution.

When blood is exiled, / nothing binds it to the race.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m a medium who brings ghosts back from the past.”

The surprise shook me like an earthquake.

A visual exploration of the physical and psychological experiences of persecution and forced displacement.

Our dreams remember our dreams.

I asked my best friend, the black stone wall, about the latest news in our house.

Come, I’ll show you two silences in the doorway.

They extract tears from our mothers’ dried eyes.

What is it like to be Syrian today?

The first time I saw her, I failed to notice her beauty.

Others have been obliged to live the lives of impossible citizenship, since the Arab who lives on the Land of Israel can never be the equal of an Israeli citizen.

O my city . . . Be a little larger / so that I may see my shadow free / on the sidewalks

She opens the window to the friendly morning / and tempts its birds

These essays don't even deserve a zero.

Stop, and weep  Not sadness over the corpse ofthe remnants of a cursed godand so not a sadnessover a bird burdened with open spaceDon’t take me-Don’t leave me-maybe, my two friends,…

Now I go back to my worry again. This is my bed, so why do I feel alienated? I spent my childhood, my adolescence, my youth here . . .

Barada, oh father of all riversOh, horse that races the daysBe, in our sad history, a prophetWho receives inspiration from his lordMillions acknowledge you as an ArabPrince . . . so pray as an imamOh…

How do the gardens of Sham transform me?

 The blue of depth is sadnessand the depth of blue-sadnessand a star quivering tears in this space-Language at the peak of clarityunfurls the night . . .Indeed, the moment is wounded by a dreamto…

Everything would have passed easily if it hadn't been for the moment of sudden darkness.

After this silence reigned. A silence I had not heard the likes of a day since I entered the cell.

It reminds me of the past, of the time when I too came looking for the world of my ancestors.

Your cooing wears me out at night—                    so wear me out.Like wine in the odes, you go on cooingand leave me what moves horses   …

Begging is the profession of humiliation and degradation, but Fatima possessed a great sense of dignity and self-worth.

1Here I am you aloneIn this mad, gapingHellHere I am you alone and death altogetherWith its predators and its seers and the informersPerhaps I am arriving atThe limit of my possibilitiesFor you to arrive…

Alif You’re not beginning . . .It’s an eternity, you know . . .I mean, the ever-after, you knowNo matter, then.Raise your cavalryBut don’t set out for the horizon,Or the sea . .…

Migration is another name for exile made gentler by the alphabet.