Something About Living

By Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

Winner of the 2024 National Book Award for Poetry
Winner of the 2022 Akron Poetry Prize

It’s nearly impossible to write poetry that holds the human desire for joy and the insistent agitations of protest at the same time, but Lena Khalaf Tuffaha’s gorgeous and wide-ranging new collection Something About Living does just that. Her poems interweave Palestine’s historic suffering, the challenges of living in this world full of violence and ill will, and the gentle delights we embrace to survive that violence. Khalaf Tuffaha’s elegant poems sing the fractured songs of Diaspora while remaining clear-eyed to the cause of the fracturing: the multinational hubris of colonialism and greed.

This collection is her witness to our collective unraveling, vowel by vowel, syllable by syllable. “Let the plural be a return of us” the speaker of “On the Thirtieth Friday We Consider Plurals” says and this plurality is our tenuous humanity and the deep need to hang on to kindness in our communities. In these poems, Khalaf Tuffaha reminds us that love isn’t an idea; it is a radical act. Especially for those who, like this poet, travel through the world vigilantly, but steadfastly remain heart first. —Adrian Matejka, author of Somebody Else Sold the World

• Language: English
• Publisher: The University Of Akron Press
• Release date: Apr 2, 2024
• ISBN: 9781629222752

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is a poet, essayist, and translator. Her work has appeared in the Nation, New England Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poetry Northwest, and Southern Humanities Review. Her debut collection of poems, Water and Salt, won the 2018 Washington State Book Award and was a finalist for the Arab American Book Award; Kaan and Her Sisters was a finalist for the CLMP Firecracker Award and the Arab American Book Award; and Something About Living won the National Book Award. She lives in Redmond, Washington with her family.

Book preview

Transit

A hoopoe leaves

a feather on the cusp

of a hillside, a temple

I’ve chosen of unremarkable rock,

its particular cradle of light.

Mine is a story of never

being able to stay long enough

to be known, of noticing

all the smallest relics.

In the rock’s shadow a cluster of wild cyclamen,

or what could be

geraniums, what might be foraged

for sustenance, what might be

pressed for keeping.

I.

Each Palestinian structure presents itself as a potential ruin

—Edward Said

Variations on a Last Chance

The fence does not hold.

The wire sheds its barbs, softens to silk thread.

The snipers run out of bullets.

The desert, as it always has, of its volition, blooms.

The snipers are distracted, sexting their girlfriends.

The snipers’ eyes are blinded by smoke from our burning tires.

The snipers wonder if they will ever see the end of us.

The fence does not hold.

The snipers take a lunch break.

The bullets melt in their chambers.

The bullets disintegrate when they reach the word Press on Yasser’s vest.

The news finally breaks the stillness around us.

The bullets will themselves away from the boy’s skull.

The boy’s sandals sprout wings and he hovers above the bullets’ path.

The snipers lose interest in shooting at medics evacuating the wounded.

The snipers make eye contact with one of us and see.

There are enough saline bags at the hospital.

The snipers shoot and miss and miss and miss.

We outrun the snipers.

We bury the dead at the fence, let their roots reach the other side of home.

Portraits of Light

Then

The light is a molten weight, a mountain

of thirst. Of the old stones of their houses,

it makes an ocean, azure dissolving into distance.

And they are a chiaroscuro huddled on the arthritic bridge,

bodies scant as bedclothes, damp and wrinkled

in the throes of nightmare, bodies trudging

in low relief against limestone.

Who spoke first as they walked? Did the boy

in slippers shuffle ahead asking

after his bicycle? Did the old man mutter

end-of-days verses between sobs? The sun scores

tender scalps, inscribes legends on a map of loss.

Now

The light is damask draped on the clothesline.

Tea glasses touch with castanet swiftness, a mint haze

floats over the women’s words. The gate groans

open and the music of slender heels on tiles ushers in the evening.

Tea darkens in the pot as cicadas prepare

their supplications, mosquitos ready for their night raids.

One of the women slides the deck out of its box, halves it,

begins to deal. Another reaches for her monogrammed lighter,

their laughter a rustle of curtains drawn.

String-of-pearl smiles enrobed in scarlet give way

to cigarette kisses. Smoke undulates, threads

between soft curls and crepe collars.

Manicured fingers wave fans of kings and queens.

Later

The light is irrelevant, though it fills quiet rooms of

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