FROM THE ARCHIVES

after Michael Rakowitz

May we wrap in tanoor bread            our enemies swirl
them in date molasses            scoops of sesame paste
may we fill             their bellies, stuff them             in fact
like leaves of chard            with onions and rice and fat tomatoes
crack open            only the juiciest pomegranate picked
from Ayn al-Tamr            and bloody their fingers
with its flesh      its sickening            acidsweet       even when dead
we know             it is bad luck cutting down             a fig tree
so we learn to leave it                        hunch under its blackened
shoots may we like the wingless wasp        dig      in the belly
of other figs        tunnels               so that our enemies may still
escape to carry  what’s left of the pollen            and grow.

Contributor Notes

Joumana Altallal is a Zell Fellow in Poetry at the University of Michigan's Helen Zell Writers' Program. She works with Citywide Poets to lead a weekly after-school poetry program for high school students in Metro-Detroit. Her work appears in Glass Poetry, Mud Season Review, Bayou Magazine, and Rusted Radishes, among others. She has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers' Conference, Napa Valley Writer's Conference, and the Radius for Arab American Writers. You can find Joumana on Twitter @joualt.