![]() Fargo Nissim Tbakhi (he/him) is a queer Palestinian-American performance artist. His writing can be found in Apex Magazine, Strange Horizons, Mizna, Peach Mag, The Shallow Ends, and elsewhere. For My Little Wooden Fisherman
Little carved Laborer, little life- Bringer. You dangle Off the precipice Of meaning. Stranded Without anyone to feed Or teach. Out to sea, Gazan fishermen are restricted To fifteen miles of water. You have No vessel to care for. No kin To lose. You are no island, Little tree. A string alone Is a map to one fish. Together, Knotted in love and conflict, We are maps towards plenty. Little wooden fisherman, I took a piece of bark And carved for you a boat: A place to sit, a way to float. My life is now joined with yours. May the two of us use it well, and learn: Give a man a revolution And he will eat for a day. Teach a man To revolt-- Travel Log: Visit Palestine! after Steven Duong When they let me out of that black site on the Mercury settlement, I roam a spell. Break knuckles for a laugh. Try to phone my mother but no answer. Time stretches out and I do too, I fall in and out of a good thing. Thank God they never fixed the gravity, for my knees are piss-poor after the beatings and the lightness helps. Somebody offers me transport to Earth. Decline. I spend my days drinking and trying to get close enough to someone with a passport to rob them. No luck. Days were, I used to be honest. Days changed. Try my mother again. Still no answer. I wonder if she’s floating somewhere outside of range. Visit Abu Khaled outside New Jerusalem. He is dying so I pray with him, then pocket some cash when he’s asleep. So something broke in me. So what. My feeling is God never wanted me on this planet and so he isn’t paying too close attention. Back at the bar someone asks me about mercy. I say it is like ghosts a thing you want to believe in but never can feel you deserve. They tell me no it’s a drink, have I tried it. No. I sleep the sleep of a bad person. I believe the things they say of me on this planet of cells so close to the sun. In dreams I see my mother aboard the good ship Palestine A bucket of bolts but it’s ours and it drifts, it moves And I’m running towards the port but my knees split like knuckles Somebody asks me about home, I say I’ve never tried it Mom’s at the porthole smiling like she’s happy And I’m at the door fumbling through my wallet, hoping I’ve held onto enough to go inside and stay
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