☀ Today's Poem: "Beit Anya" Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

The name of my father's village speaks
of the misery of pilgrims unwelcome
for their poverty, a thorn

-strewn hillside to keep them
at a distance from the house
of god for fear of their disfigurement.

All language is littered with corpses
of words, the shrouds we make
for them, the sacred oils we spill

to anoint or embalm. Beit a home;
ancient breath and second
letter of ancestry. Home of unripe figs

or of suffering? Or of the tribe
who amassed enough gold
and armor to consolidate a story?

I need no dictionary
to parse the twin spirits of Anya—
that affliction and caregiving

are one vector, measured in cubits
or years of prayer occluded
from the sanctuary. In my father's childhood,

soldiers clamored the rocks
to Lazarus' tomb. He longed for
lamb and spiced rice instead of the bones

the wealthy uncles sent
for broth to stay ten mouths. He dreamt
and wandered the olive groves.

He went to school in the city
of seventy names. All language is volition
—the rising up of a body

thought lifeless, the summoning
of a spirit from sepulchral silence. A village
might be known for derelict light,

for the footsteps of supplicants, its dead
a transom fastening it to memory. Before his own
father died the family kept a dog, to herd cattle

and hold coyotes at the edges of the field.
Prince—my father told us the animal's name,
a frail laugh uttered as a third transfusion raised him,

again, from the edge. A proper English name,
a protest, even our dog, awlaad el kalb,
and when the canine sank his teeth

into the soldier's sun-burned shin, my grandfather
protected his noble beast, told the soldier who had come for blood
to take my grandfather's life first.

All language is legend—we grow into its landscapes.
House of Misery for want, for death's
early visits and a dearth of miracles. My father says

the soldier returned, smirking,
with a thick slab of meat that Prince could not resist.
Our derivation of meaning—the study we make

of moments—travels the empires engraved
in our palms. That a poison robbed a young boy
of his dog is both calamity and marginalia.

All language is oracular—
we are forever
burnishing the wound, readying the chasm.