ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Emily Khilfeh is a Palestinian-American writer from Seattle, WA. She is a graduate of Pacific Lutheran University, and former fellow at the Bucknell Seminar for Undergraduate Poets. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart and was a shortlist finalist for the 2019 Palette Poetry prize. Her poetry can also be found at Up the Staircase Quarterly, Pinwheel Journal, and the 2018 Ghassan Kanafani Anthology.
Also by Emily Khilfeh:
Airport Poem
Two Poems
Lachrymose
Sometimes within one egg is another egg.
One delicate thing contains another. A poem-
child, I find myself born like a cross to a white
pilgrim world. Mythic-style, I drop pearls
and pebbles from my palms. I find Sebastia
and the grave of the Baptist, nestled in the rot.
I call myself lachrymose. Tear-catcher, vile,
finding the place where the women stamped
their feet and danced. I’m a crypt-keeper,
keeping track, nursing rhymes and repenting with
in my teeth I will bite Arabs, in my legs I will kick
Arabs, in my mind I will hate Arabs in me
is a rhyme-girl rhythm and the half-Arab heart
that pilgrim opens, the world, pilgrim name
yourself and hide meaning, hide sadness,
between Ebal and Gerizim in the roses
and the old-tire basket. A grave-digger,
encrypted, inside his bones the holy spirit.
And inside the lachrymose: tears. A vial
holding memory, Victorian in falseness
for although a lachrymatory is a small bottle,
there is no proof they were ever meant
to catch tears. Meaning made up later.
As I am meaning-maker. Museum-sight me
old Roman coin, old coffin, old steps
that take me down to the vault and the
place where the saint sleeps and does
not wake, and does not care that we
spend our waking days to weep. Tell him
to take the head off, Baptist-killer. Tell me
to take in my teeth, word-seeker, being be-er
armorered in meaning, no bottles to contain
what I am born into. And all that I have made me.
A collector of tears. Unsettle me, settlers,
let me watch the land go. Undoor the mountain
and swallow the key. I know my license plates
have no nation. Somewhere in this, I am hidden.
If you find me, tell me where. Like a martyr,
we turn the eggs in our hands. Take the head off
the meaning, silver-plated dancer, and dance.
I visited my dad’s hometown in Palestine for the first time in 2018. I knew going into the trip that I was bound to write about it, but once I was there, I found myself questioning my role as a writer and how I was going to get American readers to understand everything I was seeing. It was a trip that, on the one hand, gave me a lot of peace and happiness as it brought me closer to my family and my heritage. But it also included plenty of grief: family members I’d never get to meet, the settlements I saw in the distance, the ways war has touched my family. This poem is my response to that. Instead of trying to explain with neat definitions, the only way I could see understanding myself was to lean into the contradictions, the myths, the history, the halves.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
