I wanted to write about Israel as a carceral state that is perpetually expanding, which echoes the spilling nature of colonialism. The effects of this are felt everywhere, within a system where capital moves freely, while peoples’ movements are violently policed. This is an attempt at honoring the rooted entanglements of struggle and resilience embodied by Third World peoples & ecologies battling white supremacist extraction. The land itself knows how to resist.
“Israeli Firm Chosen to Build Prototype of U.S. Border Wall with Mexico”
Most of this space could be wasted
trying to convince you—there exists
an OUTSIDE and an INSIDE. Las Neuces,
Gila, look there is water, or purchased war
lines in tierra. Empires erase, redraw
we and them in pencil. It remains
controversial, the question of what
exists. So instead of explaining !again!
WHO is an outside,
FREE SPACE
To break the weir
Past detectability in the radar zone unpetaled
dry seed curled inward the Rose of Jericho grows
wild in the deserts of Palestine and Mexico after
fifty years without water the plant still remembers
how to resurrect Siempre Viva Between
OUTSIDE and there the dead rose harbors be
I wait for the water and
I know
Notes on Third World Subtraction THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SCARF AND VEILED THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CONTRACT AND CAUGHT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN VACCINATE AND VACANCY THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN INVISIBLE AND INTEREST THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ART AND FOUND THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TIME AND EROSION THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RUPTURE AND RETURN THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ALPHABET AND FINGER THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WET AND IRRIGATE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MADNESS AND MERCY THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN JUDGMENT AND CELLS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SUBJECT AND WITNESS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SPECULUM AND SEX THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HEIR AND STERILE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FOUNTAIN AND FEMA THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LAND AND LANDED THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN VITAL AND VIBRANT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LUNG AND BLUE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RIOT AND ROT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ELECTION AND IMMOLATION THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN NAME AND NAMED THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN IMPORT AND SALT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BORDER AND ROUTE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BODY AND BODIES IN THE WATER
Zaina Alsous is a Palestinian writer and abolitionist. You can find some of her work in The Offing, The New Inquiry, Mask Magazine, the Boston Review, and elsewhere. Her chapbook Lemon Effigies is forthcoming from Anhinga Press.
BACK TO ISSUE