I Have Brought You A Severed Hand

Ghayath Almadhoun

In a phalanx of notes and footnotes, I Have Brought You A Severed Hand destabilizes the very hierarchies of the page, and in so doing transgresses the borders of the poem, the nation, the body, and even that zone between speaker and addressee. Written over the years 2017 to 2023, the poet takes us to Palestine, Syria, Germany and Sweden, reasserting the stakes for those unable to leave their states of imprisonment while proposing that hope may be inseparable from the absurdity of violence. He writes: “You say that I survived the war. No, my dear, nobody survives wars. It’s only that I didn’t die. I just stayed alive.”