Fady Joudah


White Dwarf


If my last hope is reached,
I’d have reached my last fear: 

because thinkable, measurable
forces (conceivable and quantifiable)
would have landed 

our homelessness at its terminal
variant: your pull 

of a hundred suns. White dwarf,
degenerate core
of previous perfection,
your remoteness is a vow 

only mad lovers speak.
Here, monads in the polis, 

our promise of value is the regime of it.
You’re likely good 

for something. Describing you
is an immersion
in nine alphabets during conquest, 

but finding another rock
that circumambulates you 

and settling it
is like waiting for Mecca.

Also by Fady Joudah: "Corona Radiata," "Horses," "Outer Rings of Saturn"
In the store: "Corona Radiata" Broadside
Interview: a conversation with Fady Joudah on his book Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance.

photo: Cybele Knowles

photo: Cybele Knowles

Fady Joudah has published four collections of poems, The Earth in the Attic, Alight, Textu, a book-long sequence of short poems whose meter is based on cellphone character count; and, most recently, Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance. Tethered to Stars is his collection forthcoming from Milkweed in 2021. He has translated several collections of poetry from the Arabic. He was a winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition in 2007 and has received a PEN award, a Banipal/Times Literary Supplement prize from the UK, the Griffin Poetry Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in Houston, with his wife and kids, where he practices internal medicine.

ISSN 2472-338X
© 2020