As I mentioned earlier about the poems I am flooded with from my readers, I am sharing a poem today by Hala Alyan, a Palestinian-American writer, poet, and clinical psychologist, continuing that series. Her poetry explores trauma, addiction, and cross-cultural dynamics. 

Her family lived in Kuwait but sought political asylum in the United States when Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait.

She has written the novels Salt Houses and The Arsonists' City, the memoir I'll Tell You When I'm Home, and five poetry collections. Her memoir, I'll Tell You When I'm Home was a finalist for the 2026 Pulitzer Prize.

 Read her poem titled, “The Female of the Species” – 

They leave the country with gasping babies and suitcases
full of spices and cassettes. In airports,

they line themselves up like wine bottles.
The new city twinkles beneath an onion moon.

Birds mistake the pebbles of glass on the
black asphalt for bread crumbs.

If I drink, I tell stories about the women I know.
They break dinner plates. They marry impulsively.

When I was a child, I watched my aunt throw a halo
of spaghetti at my mother. Now I’m older than they were.

In an old-new year, my cousin shouts ‘ana bint Beirut’
at the sleeping houses. She clatters up the stairs.

I never remember to tell her anything. Not the dream
where I can’t yell loud enough for her to stop running.

And the train comes. And the ‘amar’ layers the stones
like lichen. How the best night of my life was the one

she danced with me in Paris, sharing a hostel bed,
and how sometimes you need one knife to carve another.

It’s raining in two cities at once. The Vendôme plaza
fills with water and the dream, the fountain, the moon

explodes open, so that Layal, Beirut’s last daughter,
can walk through the exit wound.