the world is not as bad as our neighbors made it to be that day— we’ve seen worse days— and how beautiful they were, these days living strife: how we loved everything about not having to go to school:

I won’t describe the past for you, I tell you I got held at borders, I tell you I am used to it, and what? What is this record you play over and over: don’t get used to it, you shouldn’t it’s sad—I bow in recognition:

and after the long journey from border to border, wanting only piece after piece of these walls around me to start breaking, what does not getting used to it do for me?

source: https://themarkaz.org/poet-ahmad-almallah/

Ahmad Almallah is a poet from Palestine. His first book of poems Bitter English is now available in the Phoenix Poets Series from the University of Chicago Press. His new book Border Wisdom is now available from Winter Editions. He received the Edith Goldberg Paulson Memorial Prize for Creative Writing, and his set of poems “Recourse,” won the Blanche Colton Williams Fellowship. Some of his poems and other writing appeared in Jacket2, Track//Four, All Roads will lead You Home, Apiary, Supplement, SAND, Michigan Quarterly Review, Making Mirrors: Righting/Writing by Refugees, Cordite Poetry Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Great River Review, Kenyon Review, Poetry and American Poetry Review. Some of his work in Arabic has appeared in Al-Arabi Al-Jadid and Al-Quds Al-Arabi. His English works have been translated into Arabic, Russian and Telugu. He is currently Artist in Residence in Creative Writing at the University of Pennsylvania.