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Ammiel Alcalay & Kholoud Hammad




                                            
Zionist Logic
                         after Langston Hughes


Lots of things have
become criminalized.

But genocide?
For our one & only

indispensable ally?
Between prayers,

the ambulance
drivers & medics

shouted
out loud:

“The Jews are coming,
the Jews are coming!”

What else were they
supposed to say?

                                                                                       
                                        April 5, 2025








“tidings”
while some might claim
& others even sleep peacefully
reveling in their bloodlust & butchery

            —for there is no denying people
                        are so expertly capable—

others will wander eternally even
in surroundings most seemingly
familiar accompanied by
the severed limbs of
those they chose
to maim

the ever-seeing eyes
plucked out by shrapnel
the still-pointing fingers
dispatched from wounded hands
the indicting heads departed
from necks & bodies
the screams extracted
by alien instruments
& even organs
desecrated
in acts of
rape &
torture—
the metallic din of
an executioner’s order
or the bureaucrat’s keystroke
disappearing whole extended families
from the wondrous pleasures of life
in this terrestrial paradise

for these no amount of soap
will ever scrub the clumps
& bits of still burning skin,
tissue, tendons, muscle, &
bone clinging to what’s left

of their mental presence
crawling along the
interstices of their
bodily frame like
shadows just too
far from reach—

such states of distress are declaredly
what I or any rational person would

wish for them these miserable
worthless inconsequential

cowardly specks
of flesh & bone

once mistaken
for living

breathing
humans








turn the page


like hi-tech termites you’ve
eaten almost everything:
we know what you’ve
stolen lately but now
it’s entirely up to you to
prove what wasn’t stolen
long ago, from so-called
“time immemorial”: even
though it’s been ages since
I abandoned your alphabet
in witnessing myself I made
a most solemn vow to all
my departed companions
never to use it again un-
less it be to extirpate &
prosecute this radical
evil we’ve been
witness to,
on behalf of
beloved
Palestine. 




Excerpts from Imperial Abhorrences / For Palestine [Forthcoming from Birds LLC], a collaborative work by poet Ammiel Alcalay and artist Kholoud Hammad. You can support Kholoud Hammad and her family at this online Spotfund page, or purchase prints of her work as a form of support by clicking here.


Ammiel Alcalay is a poet, novelist, translator, critic, and scholar, and author of some thirty books. Controlled Demolition: a work in four books, Follow the Person: Archival Encounters, and Nasser Rabah’s Gaza: The Poem Said Its Piece (co-translated with Khaled al-Hilli and Emna Zghal), have all come out in 2025. His work has appeared in small and large venues, from the Poetry Project Newsletter and Clothesline, to Time Magazine and The New York Times. He regularly writes on politics, most recently for Middle East Eye. While bringing works from other parts of the world to the US via translation and advocacy, Alcalay has also been a key figure in reconfiguring US literary and cultural history through the unique publishing, pedagogical, and public project, Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative. Founded in 2009, Alcalay’s work on Lost & Found was recognized in 2017 with a Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award.

Kholoud Hammad is a Palestinian artist, illustrator, and graphic designer born in Gaza where she still lives. Repeatedly displaced in Northern Gaza with her family since October, 2023, she continues to make intricate and beautiful artwork about the beauty of Palestine and symbols of Palestinian identity and liberation. Her work is imbued with an overwhelming spirit of resistance, depicting heroic figures in epic tableaux, whirlwind scenes of chaos and destruction, or schematic views of exploding buildings. As she herself has written: “My art springs from the reality I live every day—harsh scenes of destruction, loss, and resilience... Art became my voice when words fail me. It is my way to process pain, resist injustice, and share my truth with the world.”



Founded in 2020, Three Fold is an independent quarterly based in Detroit that presents exploratory points of view on arts, culture, and society in addition to original works in various media, including visual art, literature, film and the performing arts. We solicit and commission contributions from artists, writers, and activists around the world. Three Fold is a publication of Trinosophes Projects, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization located in the historic Eastern Market district in downtown Detroit. Click here to check out Three Fold’s events page and view a schedule of the publication’s on-site activities.

Three Fold recognizes, supports, and advocates for the sovereignty of Michigan’s twelve federally-recognized Indian nations, for historic Indigenous communities in Michigan, for Indigenous individuals and communities who live here now, and for those who were forcibly removed from their Homelands. We operate on occupied territories called Waawiiyaataanong, named by the Anishinaabeg and including the Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe (Chippewa), Odawa (Ottawa), and Bodewatomi (Potawatomi) peoples. We hold to commit to Indigenous communities in Waawiiyaataanong, their elders, both past and present, and future generations.