Right Now
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.
August 4, 2014

Photo by M./Flickr
Today on the phone,
first time in thirty years,
my friend didn’t know me.
Who? Where do you live?
Where did we meet?
She’s been slipping for a while.
I wonder if that’s how God feels
about Israel right now.
Who are you again?
Did you really suffer?

Naomi Shihab Nye is the Young People’s Poet Laureate through the Poetry Foundation (Chicago). Her most recent book is Everything Comes Next: Collected and New Poems (Greenwillow, 2020). Aziz Shihab’s last book was Does the Land Remember Me? A Memoir of Palestine (Syracuse University Press, 2007).
Recommended for You
- By Yahia Lababidi
- By Michael M. Naydan
- By Alice-Catherine Carls
- By John Zheng
- By The Editors of WLT
- By Sudeep Sen
- By Adrienne Christian
- By Zhang Er
WLT Weekly Categories
Recent Posts
A play written by World Literature Today Executive Director RC Davis-Undiano will open at 8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 10, at Yellow Dog Coffee Company in...
Photo by Eric Prouzet on Unsplash
World Literature Today is seeking applicants for consideration to join the magazine as its...
Courtesy of oscarhokeah.com
Oscar Hokeah’s Calling for a Blanket Dance (Algonquin, 2022) begins with a family tree. Names are...
Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash
Do you get jabbed by a question that seemingly appears ceaseless? Bob Dylan’s song “Watching the River Flow”...
Annie Spratt / Unsplash
Family news still travels, but not as it once did, when families huddled together over landlines.
Though I...