George Abraham

George Abraham (they/he) is a Palestinian American poet, performance artist, and writer from Jacksonville, FL. Their debut poetry collection Birthright (Button Poetry, 2020) won the Arab American Book Award and the Big Other Book Award in Poetry, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Bisexual Poetry, and was named on Best of 2020 lists with The Asian American Writers' Workshop, The New Arab, and Entropy Magazine. He is also the author of the chapbooks al youm (The Atlas Review, 2017), and the specimen's apology (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2019). He is a board member for the Radius of Arab American Writers (RAWI), a recipient of fellowships from Kundiman, The Arab American National Museum, The Boston Foundation, and the Poetry Foundation, a winner of the 2018 Cosmonauts Avenue Poetry Prize selected by Tommy Pico, and a recipient of the "Best Poet" title from the 2017 College Union Poetry Slam International. Their writing has appeared in The Nation, The American Poetry Review, Guernica, The Baffler, The Paris Review, The Missouri Review, West Branch, Mizna, and anthologies such as Nepantla, Bettering American Poetry, and Beyond Memory: an Anthology of Arab American Creative Nonfiction. They are a graduate of Swarthmore College and Harvard University, where he received his M.S. in Bioengineering. An affiliated faculty member at Emerson College, Abraham is currently based in Chicago, IL, where he is a Litowitz MFA+MA Candidate in Poetry at Northwestern University, and is working on a performance poetry collaboration titled EVE with Fargo Tbakhi. Source.

ars poetica in which every pronoun is a Free Palestine

& so it is written: the settlers will steal God’s land & FREE PALESTINE

will curse the settlers with an inability to season FREE PALESTINE’s food,

a sunburn the shape of the settler dictator’s face on everyone who will claim

FREE PALESTINE’s earth but not FREE PALESTINE’s skin

soil-stained. there. FREE PALESTINE said it. no one really owns anything FREE

PALESTINE didn’t unwrite to make it so—FREE PALESTINE’s sea

israeli; FREE PALESTINE’s sky israeli but not FREE PALESTINE’s thunder—

the blame will always be FREE PALESTINE’s & so this will be called an accurate

history; the expense of FREE PALESTINE’s visibility, willed in bloodied cloth—

or paper—FREE PALESTINE’s longest suicide: FREE PALESTINE will die

in jail & become israeli—FREE PALESTINE will die in protest & become

kite on fire—FREE PALESTINE will call Hamas fable of every

HEADLINE: israeli falafel so dry FREE PALESTINE could start an intifada with it

HEADLINE: israeli falafel so dry FREE PALESTINE could free Palestine with it

no, FREE PALESTINE will never give FREE PALESTINE’s self a name

not rooted in upheaval—FREE PALESTINE, hyphenated by settler flag:

FREE PALESTINE hyphenated by settler pronouns: FREE PALESTINE will not

pledge allegiance to Arabic. or english. FREE PALESTINE will exist

in no language; FREE PALESTINE will write poems of olive tree & checkpoint

with no free Palestine to be found; FREE PALESTINE will name the violence

& never the resurrection, like FREE PALESTINE hasn’t survived impossible

histories to get here. It is written: the blood will be on FREE PALESTINE’s

hands—might as well paint FREE PALESTINE’s nails while FREE PALESTINE’s

at it—what? is this not what FREE PALESTINE expected? did FREE

PALESTINE not think FREE PALESTINE would have the last laugh all along?

Published:

2018

Length:

Regular

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2023

Themes:

Ars Poetica

Poetic Form

Politics

Violence & War