You and Yours

The plane took off
toward San Francisco a

The familiar accent of
the Middle East flavored her mother’s voice.

Her voice, like a flute, might have
exclaimed it, “We’re Arabs!” and we were on a plane.

When I was
little, I wished my name were Layla too. B

But Layla, you

charmed me. (By the way, I
kept your flower.)

I Never Realized They Had Aspirations Like Ours

An Israeli, about the Palestinians

She has edited seven anthologies of poetry for young readers, including This Same Sky; The Tree is Older than You Are; The Space Between our Footsteps: Poems & Paintings from the Middle East; What Have You Lost?; Salting the Ocean and Is This Forever or What?

Borderlands, Cider Press Review, New Letters, Double Room: A Journal of Prose Poetry & Flash Fiction, One Trick Pony, Water-Stone Review, Spiritus, Redactions, Organica, Christian Century, Poetry 180, edited by Billy Collins, and a chapbook, Cross that Line (Lost Canyon, Barksdale, Texas).

Many thanks to Patrick Lannan and the Lannan Foundation, the Lannan Writers Residency in Marfa, Texas, and Steven, Kathryn, Eliza and Sara at the Steven Barclay Agency, and Thom Ward, my editor at BOA Editions, Ltd.