My body regularly erupts
and it hurts when it does
but it terrifies me
with its painful time delay.
My legs don’t tremble
my back doesn’t groan,
and I don’t distort my...
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People
Raed Al-Jishi
Raed Anis Al-JISHI (poet, translator; Saudi Arabia) has published one novel, seven volumes of poems in Arabic and one, Bleeding Gull: Look, Feel, Fly, in English. Alongside a career as a writer, he teaches high school chemistry in his native city of Qateef. He is a feminist and human rights activist, and works on issues involving children and literacy.
Find Raed's Arabic social media (YouTube, Twitter, Facebook) at rabdaljishi. Below are links to his English accounts.
Author's Gallery:
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It is my right to love as she wants it, to get ripped by desire when her necklace scatters the tears of pearls. It is a riot, and it is my right to love and die ... media_text
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And I see peasants singing along the milky road alongside a bull that didn’t know what a plow looks like. And beggars, desert sharpeners like a flock of cheating... media_text
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I stand near me Watching that man Come from the land far away. We have the same lisp In our tongue and in our memory. He went through me, And I didn’t notice He stole... media_text
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Distances are empty between us. Prayers are love, and when I get drunk by desire I forget from which amulet I wrote myself using its bloody saffron and which I... media_text
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If the core of rising Is the core of kneeling, where will I direct and to what will I surrender my eyes? From the collection Bleeding Gull: Look Feel Fly media_text
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We have a modest tradition of hospitality. Our Arabian coffee doesn’t need sugar or cardamom to be tasty or delightful just like the smile we serve to those... media_text
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Their identikits are a mystery. I couldn’t recognize them by the reflection of the wind Nor by the sensors On my blind stick. They walked by me with sympathy. ... media_text
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Our cotton didn’t take the sun’s side anymore. The wrung-out sweat was not injected inside us as if a shiver of a poem’s smoke. We are the shaved-off sugar top And the... media_text
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I cannot recognize myself If I don’t wear me. Faces are deceiving without their masks, like that bleeding white gulf. media_text
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Surrounded by the walls of memory with no lover and nothing to remember I mock my triangular cuffs and the illusion of hands in a circle. An iron cage of emotions... media_text
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The language of love is spontaneous,like me, like a painting of a child. I used to draw my house on the left side of the paper. My house was so small, neither doors nor... media_text
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