Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

It's an understatement to say that we need right now is what’s in Lena Khalaf Tuffafa’s poems. What we said about her last time stands, only magnified now: “These epistolary poems…contemplate the limits of language to convey the human effect of atrocity and

displacement with heart-wrenching vulnerability and resilience, until "Verbs [break], abstract nouns [collapse]" under the concrete weight of rubble and barbed wire and broken bones, and we are left to sit with sorrow and loss. And yet the language here nourishes us by helping us to face hard truths and by breaking down the arbitrary borders and identities that separate us with fear of what's outside and other, until …"our lungs have been decolonized" and "the streets are reclaiming their names."

To this let me just add this short poem, often recited by many others, including in the Irish parliament:

Running Orders:

It doesn’t matter that you have children.

You live in the wrong place

and now is your chance to run

to nowhere

So I’ll just finish by saying that Lena Khalaf Truffafa’s poetry always takes us to an important SOMEWHERE. Reading her is a migration to anger and joy, mistrust and trust, love and lust, nostalgia and loss, the things we feel for ourselves and for others and that we must acknowledge if we are to decolonize our souls and prove WE are ALL human.

-- Dave Karp (11/18/2023)

"I need a new grammar for this country" Lena confesses in her chapbook, Letters from the Interior. These epistolary poems addressed to a Miss Sahar, an Arabic instructor, contemplate the limits of language to convey the human effect of atrocity and displacement with heart-wrenching vulnerability and resilience, until "Verbs [break], abstract nouns [collapse]" under the concrete weight of rubble and barbed wire and broken bones, and we are left to sit with sorrow and loss. And yet the language here nourishes us by helping us to face hard truths and by breaking down the arbitrary borders and identities that separate us with fear of what's outside and other, until we breathe in the tear gas enough that "our lungs have been decolonized" and "the streets are reclaiming their names." -- Matt Trease (12/19/2019)