Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza - Tapa blanda

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Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet, scholar, and librarian who was born in Gaza and has spent his life there. He is the founder of the Edward Said Library, Gaza’s first English-language library. Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear is his debut book of poems. The collection won an American Book Award, a 2022 Palestine Book Award and was named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry, as well as the 2022 Walcott Poetry Prize.

In 2019-2020, Abu Toha was a Visiting Poet in the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard University.

Abu Toha is a columnist for Arrowsmith Press, and his writings from Gaza have also appeared in The Nation and Literary Hub. His poems have been published in Poetry, The Nation, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, Poetry Daily, and the New York Review of Books, among others.

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My Grandfather was a Terrorist

My grandfather was a terrorist—
He tended to his field,
watered the roses in the courtyard,
smoked cigarettes with grandmother
on the yellowish seashore lying
like a prayer rug. 

My grandfather was a terrorist—
He picked oranges and lemons,
fished with brothers until noon,
sang a comforting song en route
to the farrier’s with his piebald horse.

My grandfather was a terrorist—
He made a cup of tea with milk,
sat on his verdant land, as soft as silk,
was incensed at the sun as it kept to blink. 

My grandfather was a terrorist—
He departed his house for the coming guests,
kept some water on the table, his best,
lest the guests die of thirst after their conquest. 

My grandfather was a terrorist—
He walked to the closest safe town,
dark as the sullen sky,
vacant as a deserted tent,
darkling as a starless night. 

My grandfather was a terrorist—
My grandfather was a man,
a breadwinner for ten,
whose luxury was to have a tent,
with a blue UN flag set on the rusting pole,
on the beach next to a cemetery.

Things You May Find Hidden In My Ear

For Alicia M. Quesnel, MD

I

When you open my ear, touch it
gently.
My mother’s voice lingers somewhere inside.
Her voice is the echo that helps recover my equilibrium
when I feel dizzy during my attentiveness. 

You may encounter songs in Arabic,
poems in English I recite to myself,
or a song I chant to the chirping birds in our backyard. 

When you stitch the cut, don’t forget to put all these back in my ear.
Put them back in order as you would do with books on your shelf.

II

The drone’s buzzing sound,
the roar of an F-16,
the screams of bombs falling on houses,
on fields, and on bodies,
of rockets flying away—
rid my small ear canal of them all.

Spray the perfume of your smiles on the incision.
Inject the song of life into my veins to wake me up.
Gently beat the drum so my mind may dance with yours,
my doctor, day and night.

Palestinian Sonnet

After Wanda Coleman

Seized by echoes of suppressed words,
I surrender my memory as I flee for the maze.
I see signposts
directing me to retreat whenever I try to explore.
Every day I set foot in the maze; I close my ears
but the shouts coming from suffocated whispers
paralyze my shadow.

Letters slide from my mouth
into an icy river,
break the reflection of vapor
that emanates from melting clouds.

The chattering teeth of cold raindrops
out-sound my throbbing silence.

It is not me who tries to walk in the maze.
My withered umbilical cord tries to pull me
to my sick mother’s bedside
before it is cut mid-nowhere.

A Rose Shoulders Up

Don’t ever be surprised
to see a rose shoulder up
among the ruins of the house:
This is how we survived.