Penelope Wires (أسلاك بينيلوبي)
By Ameer Hamad
Translated by Hoda Ali
The barbed wire on the border
Is woven by a mother’s needle
Her son, lost in another war, returned
As a skeleton
He carries the barrels to the helicopters
And whenever a raid ends
New mothers wove their yarn . . .
That the air became a metal dome
Over a country
This tank stares at it
With an eye whose smoke is dozing.
Special Section: ‘To the Students of Columbia University’