The year I grow my hair past my hips, split ends swaying sun-streaked.
The year I fall asleep to the lullabies of guns in the mouths of the mountains
barium antimony lead streaking the name of the barrel on the bullet, striated like afternoon light
on bittered ground, the year I walk broken pavements,
watch the dim forms of yellow services and the dapple of water tanks, wade through garland lengths
of blue plastic, cigarette stubs, ash, Heineken 0.0, litter, the year I note the morse code of flies
dotting and dashing the damp fur of a dead dog. Through alleyways of high spices in red-patterned
bags I turn and twist like a heart, make transaction of incantation,
bahaar jaaj, za’atar, merimiyah, then past the red-fleshed heads of ewes with open tongues,
cactus fruit, endless orange portugals, pickled eggplant, olives sliced to wedding rings, the
somersault of white-brine cheese and semolina drenched in rosewater, how they have practiced
turning their lives upside down, this people, hands grasping at house-keys and their fathers’ fathers’
names, at soil turned dust and blown away in a summer,
bulldozed beneath a huge and placid sky.

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