Poems by Lara Atallah
All poems are excerpted from Exit signs on a seaside highway, available through Everybody Press.
Issue 30
Poetry
4th of July
I could tell you we’re all thieves, but
I’m not sure you’d want to listen.
Between mouthfuls of ice cream,
beers flowing like boundless youth,
laughing on a Brooklyn rooftop.
And did you see the fireworks
tear up the sky like bombs?
And did you see how it rained
fire in Gaza last night?
And did you know we paid
for it? I say we, like me too.
Like, I paid for it too. And did you
know we also torched the skies
of Iraq, and Afghanistan?
Did you know we paid for that,
too? Yes, we, like me too. Like,
I paid for it, too. Like every year,
it’s July, and we’re back
on that rooftop, cheap beers in hand,
grinding burnt meat with our teeth,
skies dark as eulogy, screaming and
flashing lights, and you call it a celebration
And we’re all at that party.
Yes, we, like me too.
I’m at the party too.
▲
I wonder if the dead can dance
Perhaps the firmament shakes when they
do. Do they hear music? Can they see
the wounds we lick with borrowed salt?
I knew Loulou was gone before
the phone rang. The knowing seeping
through walls days at a time. But
there is no bargaining
with the current.
Sentience turns ethereal.
The ribcage steadies over a
silent heart as daylight wanes.
Outside her hospital room,
another ending. Beirut dances
to an apocalypse dressed like spring.
I steal her pill box. I grab her perfume.
I hoard all the photographs.
I swallow them like almonds. In my grief,
I imagine her in a field of mimosa trees
probably making fun of me. I wish her back.
I’ll gave back the city, its people, its tangled streets
like broken bones. You can have its buildings.
I’ll even give back the sea.
▲
Forging constellations in your name
Days curdle in the pit of my stomach
and I pick them like flowers I carry
to your grave, my feet straddling
a city dying at the hands of too many
gods. A cement-colored sky, hovers
over the ruins of a collapsed heart.
Years ago, at your house you poured
coffee in porcelain cups surrounded
by walls covered in picture frames
hiding bullet holes.
I strung their cases into
constellations, drank the light
pouring in from the windows, watched
you leaf through the newspaper.
To your left, your portable radio
spouts headlines. In your eyes, the start
of an obituary. That is the difference
between dying and becoming dead.
The former is a happenstance, the latter
a long-winded echo.
Lara Atallah (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist and writer. Her practice explores the political dimensions of landscape, probing both the futility and fluidity of borders as manmade constructs. Her work has been exhibited in the US and internationally and is part of the NYU Langone Collection and the Met Museum, among others. Her writing has appeared in Artforum, Camera Austria, Flash Art Italia, Koukash, 128Lit, among others. She is the author of Edge of Elysium, Vol.1 (Open Projects Press, 2019) and Exit signs on a seaside highway (Everybody Press, 2023)