Image of a dabke at the Great March of Return

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In the video the feet are shouting

            over the whine of bullets. Bullets whine-

in this way and others, they are like

            children. The snipers as close as a panic attack

in the morning. A cardboard cutout of a fence,

            a diorama susurrating belonging or not.

In the video, you can see spurts of dust leaping into the air

            as bullets displace them, showers of sand on my people’s

impeccable kicks, designer jeans (yes, Palestinians really wear these

            to protests. A zaghareet for our flexing! Our banana republic!)

Yes, the dust is poetic license. It is also true. Yes, susurrus is a word only

            poets and leaves find useful. Yes, I am a mound of crinkly leaves

worth diving into. My autumnal body play, my decaying center. 

            In the video it is hard to see the fence

behind the roil of the tire smoke, which acts as backdrop

            for the feet, which act as percussors for the legs,

which act as representatives of the body, which acts as bodies do: it takes

            up space. Dancing scarecrow. Corpse bride.

In the video, you can hear the jaws of white people halfway across

            the world drop. You can hear the crocodile admiration: how

can they dance? so brave the way they

            undulate.

Susurrus, from the Latin for “humming, whispering.” The noise of it

            a mimesis of its action. The stamp of our feet on the dirt

a mimesis of what our hearts do every day at dawn, rising to make the

            coffee. The audacity of us: to render the entire desert our club,

the tear gas our fog machine, the lights of the drones our strobes.  

            If I was not a poet, I would simply show you the video and call it

good. If I was not a poet, I would simply dabke for you,

            nudging bullets out of the way with every kick.

If I truly believed what I said, I would not say anything.

            The Latin for susurrus is just susurrus: we did not change a thing

in the adoption. In this way, etymology is straight-forward,

            like a child,

speeding at the leg of a dancer tamping down the desert sand

            to spite the barrel of a sniper’s child-hurler propelling little

children at approximately three thousand four hundred feet per second

            towards the dancer and the dancer’s family, and all the dancer

does is dance, and all the snipers do is breathe, and all I do is try

            and say anything at all of why we dance other than the tea

is still steeping or the toenail is the riot shield of the toe or my father

            had poor reception this morning but we are trying again tonight

or we’re only impervious to bullets in poems and comic books

            and I cannot draw. In any case,

I know how to spell susurrus and can use it properly.

            Surely that counts for something.

Why dance? Why rise each morning? Why not simply stop

            breathing? Surely it would be simpler

to let the children lead us to god.

            Surely there are better ways

to try and flaunt survival.  

            A theory of the origin of the dabke holds that it comes

from the way we had to stamp the dirt

            in order to harden a floor for our huts.

Of course, due to the crumbly, ever-shifting nature of dirt,

            this would mean, of course,

that our dance

            will never be finished,

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