Community Anthologies
Community Anthologies: 2024, On Endings
Farah, Summer
By Summer Farah

the angels are falling

Art

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Editor’s Pick

“My recklessness can fit on one hand: the divine is reserved for the thumb.”

Photo collage green background with red flower on left, hand on right releasing statue with wings, and a sun with raws in middle
The featured artwork for On Endings was created by Summer Farah.

  THE ANGELS ARE FALLING 

Text that reads My recklessness can fit on one hand: the divine is reserved for the thumb. On the other side of suicide, there are albums and missions from God. I am not doing anything. In October I compose my eulogy for April. Pressure has been building in my lower back for years; everything in the gut conspires you must change your life. Inhale, the dusty middle of a mountain whose love I inherit. I have asked so much from landscapes, offered nothing of myself in return. When can giving up be beautiful? Superblooms are common in California, now, the rainfall incompatible with the Earth's wanting. Poppies with succulent leaves make the rural industrial road alive. All my photographs are marred by a technical glitch. When the first plan for preservation fails, another art makes itself known. I won't learn their proper names, project my nationalisms on someone else's land. I carve a poppy into my skin with someone I love; she appreciates how its shape stands for both. There is a thumb's space between flower and fig; botanical to botanical, hail my indecision in how it keeps me alive. Shakespeare died on his birthday, a poetry we must acknowledge. The romance of sonnets never suited me, but the longing did. The doctor presses under the hardness of my ribcage, fingers indenting as marble on marble. Daphne, my first aspiration. Josie Radek my second. I kill a carnivorous plant, a cactus rots in the kitchen window. Retribution is prophecy. Sacrifice. Sacrifice. On the other side is love from angels. I could save my laments for May. Something blooms.

Editor’s Note: You can download a hi-res, printable version of the zine here

Farah, Summer
Summer Farah

Summer Farah is a Palestinian American writer, editor, and zine-maker from California. The author of I could die today and live again, she is a member of the Radius of Arab American Writers and the National Book Critics Circle. She is calling on you to recommit yourself to the liberation of the Palestinian people each day.

Edited by Xu Li.
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