By
Sinan Antoon
January 4, 2024
From “The Book of Genocide”
Behold Gaza
Angels of death appear
in skies
and
on screens
Leaflets dropping down
like dead birds:
“Arise and flee into Egypt
and stay there forever
Herod will seek
every Palestinian child
and destroy them.”
A Hand
He was going to draw
a sea or two
where the trails of tears
could sleep
He was going to draw
a sky
where the eyes of the dead
could go on living in distant stars
He was going to draw
a hand
drawing
But he will not draw
He will extend his hand
and wait
for someone
to find his corpse
in the rubble
December 2023
Sinan Antoon
Sinan Antoon is a poet, novelist, scholar, and translator. He has published five novels and two collections of poetry. A third collection of poetry in English, entitled <em>Postcards from the Underworld</em>, was published by Seagull Books this past October. His most recent work in Arabic is <em>Khuzama</em>. His literary translations from Arabic include Ibtisam Azem’s <em>The Book of Disappearance</em> and Mahmoud Darwish’s <em>In the Presence of Absence</em>, which won the National Translation Award given by the American Literary Translators Association. His scholarly works include <em>The Poetics of the Obscene in Pre-Modern Arabic Poetry: Ibn al-Hajjaj and Sukhf</em> and numerous articles on modern Arabic poetry. Antoon is associate professor at New York University. He is co-founder and co-editor of <em>Jadaliyya</em>.
