Ode to Ghazza

+ another Palestine poem

Ode to Ghazza

It is said you are named after gauze, 
that thin mesh layered fabric meant 
to stop bleeding. Or was it gauze that 
was named after you because you sit 
like a clot ready to again be born. 
Let's not forget your Arabic origin, 
your platter full of earth, the many 
stitches which embroider your spirit 
between river and sea. Let's not forget 
where your name finds root— feed,
nourishment, sustenance. If not in figs 
and olives, then certainly in purpose. 
In reminder of our necessary humanity. 
We could do better. Your name reminds 
us that we must do better.

- Moudi Sbeity

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From the Rind to the Seed
               If I can’t say from the river to the sea
               then from the rind to the seed, 
               Palestine will be free— Anees, Hind’s Hall 2

Between every ground and the soft atmosphere is 
the fertility of us. Between each meandering river 
and vast drowning sea is the land that holds us. 
Between today and tomorrow is the worry of not 
knowing, just what will be. We are held in the space 
between things, at the threshold between catastrophe 
and promise. And if your promised land can only be 
founded at the cost of another, then it is not promised, 
is not land, is not holding. So when you hear us say

                       from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free

know that what we meant to say is Palestine is what 
mothers, is what happens between every beginning 
and its fated end, is the given name for every parcel 
of earth caught between oppression and possibility. 
We mean to say that falasteen is a mirror, a mediator, 
between your hard reflection and the dream that 
could be. Falasteen is the never again, meaning never 
again, meaning here is a land to plant blossoms 
between sky rind and molten seed. 

- Moudi Sbeity

Photo by Emre on Unsplash

I wrote these poems for Gaza, but they apply to Lebanon too, especially with the IDF now stationed along the Litani River, a river I swam in regularly as a kid. Here is a photo of my uncles, grandpa, and my dad during the winter of 2023, and a video a bit more upstream.

The title for the second poem, From the Rind to the Seed, comes from the Palestinian-American rapper Anees. I recognize that this chant, though liberatory in its intentions for justice and a free Palestine, has been unfairly popularized by the Israeli media as an “antisemitic” chant. In the event anyone receives it in this way, please know that this is not how I present it here, nor how I see it. I invite you to consider this: after a people has been robbed of their land, their food, their culture, mobility, and so forth, to then police the language of resistance? This is the playbook of erasure. I fear that Southern Lebanon is now facing the same fate. I hope you know my heart and intentions are with justice and liberation for all people from all kinds of violence and oppression, and that my poems have said as much.