10. 26. 2022

Mimesis


Fady Joudah



My daughter
                        wouldn’t hurt a spider
That had nested
Between her bicycle handles
For two weeks
She waited
Until it left of its own accord
 
If you tear down the web I said
It will simply know
This isn’t a place to call home
And you’d get to go biking
 
She said that’s how others
Become refugees isn’t it?

Fady Joudah is a Palestinian-American poet and physician. He won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition for his collection of poems The Earth in the Attic. “Mimesis” forms part of the collection Alight (Copper Canyon Press, 2013) and is reprinted here with permission of the author.