My daughter
wouldn’t hurt a spider
That had nested
Between her bicycle handles
For two weeks
She waited
Until it left of its own accord
If you tear down the web I said
It will simply know
This isn’t a place to call home
And you’d get to go biking
She said that’s how others
Become refugees isn’t it?
Fady Joudah is a Palestinian American physician, poet, and translator. He was born in Austin, Texas, and grew up in Libya and Saudi Arabia. He was educated at the University of Georgia, the Medical College of Georgia, and the University of Texas Health Sciences in Houston. In 2002 and 2005 he worked with Doctors Without Borders in Zambia and Sudan, respectively. Joudah lives with his family in Houston, where he works as a physician of internal medicine.
By Fady Joudah
No shardswhere one is bound to no place in the first place
all shardswe were clear on that from the beginning
Absence is always sudden to hear your voiceonce more more
echo than shrapnel qualia of the forbidden
transforms itself into wounds regeneratesa hydra...
By Fady Joudah
The rice field birds are too clever for scarecrows,
They know what they love, milk in the grain.
When it happens, there will be no time to look for anyone.
Husband, children, nine brothers and sisters.
You will drop your sugarcane-stick-beating of plastic bucket,
Stop...
