Thick fog, untimely. A flock alights on the shoulder of night, sleeps.
There’s a well of luck. I know its opacity.
I drop love words in its mouth:
I will need them.
Closer—I see what looks like a distant field.
The fog is a veil—
it will not lift from where I’m sitting.
Though my intuition is mirror-bright as a river—
I drop pebbles in, to remember.
I will need them.
Hala al-Shrouf is the author of two poetry collections and the Director of Publications at the Palestinian Museum in the West Bank. She lives in Ramallah. Their poems in this issue appear in You Must Live: New Poetry from Palestine, edited and translated by Sherah Bloor and Tayseer Abu Odeh, which will be published this fall. (September 2025)
Tayseer Abu Odeh is a writer, a translator, and Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at al-Ahliyya Amman University in Jordan. (September 2025)
Sherah Bloor’s first book of poems, The Gathering, will be published next year. (September 2025)
English (US) · 