Elegy

By Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

Issue 35 • Spring 2017 • Poetry

To lose a homeland you must give away
your stories. No sentences can be saved.

Verbs will break, abstract nouns will collapse and
precious centuries will wither away.

The world you spoke of and the world that spoke
of you will be caked in mud, strafed with smoke.

You burn the documents that will not pass
checkpoints, the line of refugees thickens,

the siege aimed at your ribcage sharpens its
knives. You no longer want. No possessions,

no hunger nor want. Only a border
passage, the frayed hem of the horizon.

To lose a homeland you must give away
your self. Your words must break open, become

empty containers the shapes of which will
forever remind you of what you used

to hold inside. Beyond the greening fields
there is an old road to walk and it is

never paved, never the place you used to
travel in the lemon blossom dreams you

used to have when you owned a pillow or
a lantern or the solace of a language.

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is an American poet of Palestinian, Syrian, and Jordanian heritage. Her first book of poems, Water & Salt, is published by Red Hen Press. She is the winner of the 2016 Two Sylvias Prize for her chapbook Arab in Newsland. Her most recent poetry publications appear or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Crab Creek Review, Barrow Street, Drunken Boat, and Massachusetts Review. She is an alum of Hedgebrook and an MFA candidate at the Rainier Writing Workshop of Pacific Lutheran University. She lives in Redmond, Washington. You can learn more about her work at www. lenakhalaftuffaha.com