Isabella Rosselini said she loved her father’s big belly
because it reminded her of how he used to sit in bed
all day writing, papers strewn across the bedsheets.
His stomach symbolized his creativity.
I like to remember that when I sit in bed luxuriating,
writing poems all day, useless to the world. Sometimes
I want to take a poem into the Gazan genocide,
because that’s in bed with me, too.
Maybe some big-bellied bozo will make a Gazan genocide
Bicycle Thief or Year Zero. A few people might see it
on an obscure streaming platform. More and more,
we’re living in times when great art is seen by three people.
There was a time in my life when I eagerly awaited
each new Arab film. It was such a rare occurrence,
I rushed to see it the day it came out.
Divine Intervention, Paradise Now,
Lila Says, Salt of This Sea, a screening of
Battle of Algiers or Ali: Fear Eats the Soul,
even Kingdom of Heaven. But I don’t have
the stomach for it now.
A film came out several years ago called Capernaum
(Have you heard of it?) starring a Syrian refugee
child actor living in the slums of Beirut,
who sues his parents for neglect.
There’s a character called “Cockroach Man”
dressed like Spiderman. It sounds like it should be
a comedy, but reviews say it’s overwhelmingly bleak,
so I’m avoiding it.
That’s what’s happened, living with an open wound
caused by that word I learned as a child, Nakba,
which translates to Catastrophe, which refers to. . .
I don’t want to get into it.
I italicize Nakba because that’s done with foreign words.
In the context of this poem it may read as a film title,
but it’s not a film, and if it was made into a film,
I wouldn’t rush to see it.
Intifada is also not a film, though when its sequel
raged during my sophomore year, I streamed it online
and found that I could take it in stride. When Israel began
yet another bombardment of Gaza—
Operation Returning Echo, Cast Lead, Root Canal,
Pillar of Whatnot— When Iraq was destroyed twice,
when Syria was destroyed— When Gaza was destroyed—
When twenty million Yemeni were starved to death,
and the Palestinian prisoner died on the eighty-fifth day
of his third hunger strike—When the Blackwater murderers
were pardoned, when Guantánamo was never closed—
I sat in bed all day, papers strewn across the bedsheets,
writing poems, sick with grief— luxuriating, useless.