February 2, 2022

Anti-Biography

by Mohammed El-Kurd

This text is published as part of Mizna 22.1: The Experimental Issue, guest-edited by Tarik Dobbs. Available to order here.

I don’t believe in capitalism or socialism
Or an ism that gives my mother a fuss.
—Jackie Braje

I am but my credentials apparently,
                                      in third person
                                      in pretense.

I am but Jerusalem, too.
Published by way of

                                                          their remorse
                                                                                                           snipers to my spine
                                                                                                           bombs women children etc.
My apologies for the inverted syntax
I am reluctant to say what I write about:
                               I don’t know anymore.
                               the question is about the earth—
                                                          primates over prose

Most days     I’m in psychosis               spine to my storms
                                                                              bait to my rage
                                                                              tired metaphors.

I think identity is corny.
That would have enraged me at seventeen.
My current beliefs would have—
                                    except for the rifles
we all agree on the rifles.

I am but the institution, the prestige, the watermelon.
Most of that poetry is theater over thunder.
Most days I’m pulling pythons off my ribs.

I don’t hope for much more than what my grandmother hoped for.
Most of the rest is مسخرة                                   How do you translate مسخرة?

I am but all that performance.
Who took poets off park benches to put commercials for poets on park benches?
Who took poets off my shelves to put pills where poets once were?
                        I won’t sit on a recliner
                        and pay $200 an hour
                        to make villains out of coffee stains.

I gulp metaphors without counting.
My poems become mosaics                                  unintentionally.
messy rooms                       habitually.

                                                                                    A cluttered bedroom isn’t poetic
                                                                                    it’s melodrama.

I am but my love for my land, by the way,
I have chosen you, my homeland, in love and in obedience
                                                                            in secret and in public.

In truth I’m ashamed of my dreams.
There are those who dream of seeing the ocean,
Palestinian men who saw grave before gravel,
                                  the coffin before the coast.

Newspaper blank commissions:
“The Psychological Effects of Occupation.”
I have never once felt free anywhere:
not with the Jordanian passport;

                              not in Santa Monica, the American Tel Aviv;
                              not in New York, the American Tel Aviv;
                              not in Tel Aviv, the American Tel Aviv.

*

I am but my nostalgia,
                  my sick homesickness,
Bike through Brooklyn:
Jerusalem neighborhoods
Radio “Israel.”
             This is a yearning for rage.                I’m in Stockholm.

What else goes into a bio?
                                   On Judgement Day, God asks your parents
about you.
I am but my obedience to my mother.
رضاكي يا أمي
God said it,       apparently.

I keep my secrets to keep her sane.

Not breaking cycles if that’ll break her heart.

She’s had a tough life.

These are her years to rest.

Mohammed El-Kurd is an internationally-touring poet and writer from Jerusalem, Palestine. His work has been featured in The Guardian, This Week In Palestine, Al-Jazeera English, The Nation, and the forthcoming Vacuuming Away Fire anthology, among others. Mohammed graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design with a B.F.A. in Writing, where he created Radical Blankets, an award-winning multimedia poetry magazine. He is currently pursuing an M.F.A. in Poetry from Brooklyn College. His poetry-oud album, Bellydancing On Wounds, was released in collaboration with Palestinian musical artist Clarissa Bitar. Apart from poetry and writing, el-Kurd is a visual artist, printmaker, and most recently, co-designer of a fashion collection with Serbian designer Tina Gancev. Mohammed has spent his undergraduate weekends performing poetry at campuses and cultural centers across the United States and hopes to continue in the post-COVID-19 era.