June 5, 2025

Wrong Winds—Excerpts

by Ahmad Almallah

Eluding illusion and treading warily around “the blank falsity of day,” Palestinian poet Ahmad Almallah’s recently-released third collection of poetry, Wrong Winds, presents us with an enduring suspicion of the apparent and the seeming. Purchase a copy of Wrong Winds HERE.

—Nour Eldin H., assistant editor

I don’t know mainly how
to save myself from my
words: I would want them
all, alive and well, or at
once, all at once, burning.

—Ahmad Almallah

AFTER AL-SHANFARA

ولكنّ نفسًا مُرة لا تقيمُ بي                 على الذأم إلا ريثما أتحولُ

◆

الشّنفرى

◆

• but this proud bitter self
• has no place in it
• for injury;
• it scorns
•        till eyes turn
•         toward an
•                   other
• beyond those places
• in the past I’ll leave—
•              setting out in me.

WOOK

When the world ends
—as in the now—we’ll
have to turn books to
their source, and use
them as burning wood.

For now: I look at my
stack—of scrap books?
Mostly wood on wood
doesn’t burn on its own.
What will I part with
first to keep warm, or

cook my self something?
Because you can’t eat a
book, not for sustenance
anyway! Or could I make
a structure out of all my
books—what would wood

look like in that form?
Would the words stick
out facing the sky, or
would they be dripping
in, on my head, on my
everything. I don’t know

how to save myself, any
how? most of the time?
I don’t know mainly how
to save myself from my
words: I would want them
all, alive and well, or at
once, all at once, burning.

PURE&LOVE

1/2

the object
doesn’t
exist—

thus: no
one is
drawn

to another;
but what
if two

are drawn
together—
will this mean

you’ll be wait-
ing for me in
the after-

life, where
figures
don’t

have to touch?

2/2

benefit-cost-ratio
demands that the
canvas be as wide
as can be drawn

like an expansive
golf field confront-
ed by all the love
cliches: dawn, sun

etc. everywhere
every color is made
invisible by another
color; because the
heart can’t pump love
all day, it takes it away
for matters of living—
isn’t it sad to let go of

chance, for the sake
of the design, the
already given
              structure?

LIFE&DAWN

Both are drawn. This
is the blank falsity
of day. This: I take
as reality. Eyes can
or not. Look in or
out. There. Death
announcing itself
in squares, balanced
on the corner. Boxes,
like boxes that turn
out to be simple fact:
boxes, and more
boxes against
the sun, which I start
to draft, beginning
and brushing its light-
lock. Everywhere, the
mind is a god. Misstep
and you’ll fall prey to
illusions. So: carry on
without starting. Be
the cause to be, because
one has to misstep in
order to defile, because
one has and one has not:
                                                           etc.

Ahmad Almallah grew up in Palestine and currently lives in Philadelphia. His newest poetry
collection, Wrong Winds, is out with Fonograf Editions (2025). His other collections include
Border Wisdom (Winter Editions 2023) and Bitter English (Chicago 2019). He is currently artist-in-residence in English and Creative Writing at UPenn.