January 2025

Is it 2025 already? I no longer perceive time.

The Palestinian flag that the student union hung last year has lost color, fading away, and yet the genocide machine still busy: eating us alive; starving us from the inside; disbowling our sanity. I think of Gaza everyday. Some days I am hopeful and other days I’m just as feeble as that flag on top of the social studies building.

Despite the fatigue, the desperation and the helplessness, we continue with this weird blind faith that we will be free (sooner or later). This is me trying to continue: to spot beauty in this harsh world; to hold on to solace in words; to wonder and wander through the poems I’m sharing with you today

• Grief poems are my new favorite. Thank you Alexandra Lytton Regalado for exisiting and writing this poem.
• I find solace/hope/haven in witness poetry. Read this poem by Corolyn Forche,
• I read Gilgamish when I was a freshman, and I was[is] amazed by this story/myth/history. (I love how the Spanish word historia means both history and story). This is a poem about giving birth to moons, among other things by the Palestinian American poet Issam Zineh
• Wondering/wandering in Bab Al Amud (Damascus gate) in Jerusalem. Damn I miss Jerusalem (though when I lived in Jerusalem, I hated it), and how this poem (by Edward Salem) made me experience (for a split of a second) the feeling of standing on the stairs facing bab al amud.
• The only thing that I love about war is its poems. Here’s a collection by Sukoon.
• Another great poem imitating Mahmoud Darwish, only this time Shaimaa Abulebda relinquishes the metaphors. https://arablit.org/2025/01/02/new-poetry-the-tent-is-closing-in-on-us/

I have three finals next week. I’m supposed to know the dynamics of nephrons and the ability of PET scan to spot the unfortunate decision of cells to proliferate uncontrollably (tumor). I take a break from understanding sodium regulation, and read a poem. Then study abdominal CT scans, then another poem. It’s been a good exercise for my brain to keep jumping from left to right; from reason to imagination; from fact to verosimíl. Maybe they are not so different after all.

Now seriously, I’m going back to study inspid diabetes.