Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear
Addressing the surgeon who opens his ear, Abu Toha catalogs what is stored inside — his mother's voice, songs, and the sounds of drones and bombs — memory as an archive that must be put back in order.
When you open my ear, touch it gently. My mother’s voice lingers somewhere inside. Her voice is the echo that helps recover my equilibrium when I feel dizzy during my attentiveness.
(excerpt)
About this poem
The title poem of Mosab Abu Toha’s debut collection, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza (City Lights, 2022), was first published in Poetry magazine in 2021 and is dedicated to Alicia M. Quesnel, MD. The collection won an American Book Award and a 2022 Palestine Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry.
In the poem, the ear becomes an archive: a mother’s voice, Arabic songs and English poems, the buzz of drones and the roar of F-16s — and a plea that, once stitched up, everything be put back “in order as you would do with books on your shelf.”