DALY CITY COUNCIL MEETING, ITEM 16
by PRISCILLA WATHINGTON
And we are not here to be spice on this bland earth.
Not to throw fists. And not because we are descendants
of this language, although we are its inheritance,
its kingdom come. Not to be photographed,
although we say what we say in public.
One minute or less to be for or against fire.
One minute to say, Have you seen the mothers
cradling their daughters in a field of white bags?
One minute to say holy city, all of us
here, in the folding chairs surrounded by a choke
of police. We the syllables that come up for air
at the podium. We fragment and em-dash
the best we can before the council’s golden seal.
Whereas 290 buses full of schoolchildren bombed.
Whereas my brother spilled, my cousin
of unknown status since Monday. Where-
as if two-thirds of this city devoured by rocks.
Be it Further Resolved, we’ll walk these stairs in two weeks
once more, to wrestle with symbols and shrouds.
Be it our salve to enter into the record our love
of the cessation of hostilities. Let it mark us
like our fog: a vast cloud that touches the ground—
salting, wetting every trembling mouth.
FOR KARIMEH ABBUD
by PRISCILLA WATHINGTON
Yours was a world all in its place
your baby brother tucked into his mother’s bed like Galilee
was tucked into her Palestine with that faraway look
in the eyes asking all those questions of the mustache
and the dove-necklaced dusk,
the organ-cooing night.
There you are in that unshaken globe
rising so light can find your arms
moving furiously toward the secret chamber
of your camera. At seventeen, you looked where I looked
and saw Bethlehem painted slick with pink
and soapy whites. No reenactors were hired
that morning. The birds woke and found a sesame candy bar
teeming with larvae. A shopkeeper’s sleeves danced with pine
-pricked light as he wiped the dust off a cup.
Nothing held still but your finger choosing
where to freeze the hour: 1919 Palestine
a silver life. Yes, we were acrobats
standing on a bottle-propped chair,
shy young mothers of peach
-cheeked babes with fine thread
along our hips, yes,
we were peasants memorizing
the beetles of the fields, old men breathless
among Sebastia’s columns, we were crowned
Miss Palestine of Akka with pearls down to our waist,
and we were bare-footed teens
pulling water from a Nazareth
well, with a half-smile and a palm to shade our eyes,
yes, we were that perfumed city
kid, briefly immaculate, for you,
our lady, our national photographer.
But time rushed in and when you took another picture,
your baby brother had fallen from the bell tower
and there were soldiers grabbing a shopkeeper by his sleeves.
And when you looked again, Zionists were photographing
the plains, plucking postcards
from apartments. Oh photographer of the sun
after your death, we knocked on the water tank
and suffocated among smugglers.
Still, your camera returns us
tall and tan to our towns and our farms.
Oh we are the land’s
lavish fruits.
Note: “For Karimeh Abbud” previously appeared in Look Again: Portraits of Daring Women. We are grateful to reprint this poem as part of Priscilla Wathington’s Djanikian Scholars portfolio.
Priscilla Wathington is a Palestinian American poet/editor and the author of the chapbook, Paper and Stick. Her poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Adi Magazine, Gulf Coast, Michigan Quarterly Review, Salamander, and elsewhere. She was a Sam Mazza Writer-in-Residence at San Francisco State University’s Poetry Center in 2024 and a Tin House Scholar in 2025. Alongside Zeina Hashem Beck and Arwa Alsamarae, Wathington is co-founder of the Bay Area SWANA-&-Friends reading series, Samar. Wathington holds an M.A. from Georgetown University and an MFA from Warren Wilson College.