Checkpoint, and: Isdoud (for Fady Joudah)
- Checkpoint, and: Isdoud (for Fady Joudah)
Checkpoint
each day I enter with open / papers & snake the coiledwires & barbed cattle chute / Qalandia / & bunker sand
-bagged heads / to study the very ground / & watch oneselfbeing watched / a ticking watch / other’s hands handing over
to red-haired & fretting / Uzi itchy with questions& half a world / from his birth / a passportless plastic bag
scuds & tumbles past border / its blue flag blessed by wind /O to be winged / & not locked in the fate of checkpoints
outside the milk of oxygen / held up / outside the /in /no man’s / land / to lift outside gravity’s root & float
in the matrix / the mind a stone / bones grinding themselveslike teeth / in this mouth / vacuum-locked / suspended
till he gloves back / the papers / aviators glinting backthis alien’s alien face [End Page 14]
Isdoud (for Fady Joudah)
dear descendantof the disappeared you ascend
the pillarof your own airspin & span
whole abysseswith linestranslating there
to here & hereto wherewind winds
in dry wadishoists seain handful
after invisiblehandfulisdoud now
your e-mail address& digital imageof branches
through windowswithin school ruinsa refugee points
with his caneto what heonly can see
you argue againstthe argumentagainst your [End Page 15]
self youyourself make& home in
kiss my blindeyes clearclose keyholes
with openinghomeland youcradle in vowels
what was notnever yoursI’ll hold it here
till you return [End Page 16]
Philip Metres is the author of Sand Opera and other books. A two-time recipient of the NEA and Arab American Book Award, he teaches at John Carroll University.
