self-portrait as a lamp between two countries
Lamp/Mamluk dynasty (1250-1517), 14th century / Syria or Egypt
Blown glass with polychrome enamels and building
Martin A. Ryerson Collection, 1932.1179 (The Art Institute of Chicago)
Rulers in the Mamluk era (1250-1517) commissioned glassmakers to create lamps like this one to illuminate the interiors of secular and religious buildings throughout Egypt and Syria. ... In religious contexts, their glow would symbolize divine light and the presence of God.
In the art museum where the Mediterranean & Middle Eastern wing
is only Ancient Egypt & Greece, there is a painted lamp made
in one country or another, but never the place between:
Egypt or Syria, never Falastin. I can guess where
the institute gets its money: someone is
willing to pay for the privilege
of pretending there's a great swath
of nothing separating two countries where
there's a land that stretches from the river to the sea.
In the Art Institute where every infant Christ in the Medieval
wing has a gilded halo, the curators refuse to see god in the rest of us.
In the repository of thieved artifacts, curators count on geographic ignorance,
wishing for an amorphous blank in the mental map to replace the country
historians decline to name. They only love us when we're dead & holy --
history's paper trail singed in the embers of colonial memory.
In the stolen empire, my body is a reliquary
for the Palestine museums refuse to say.
In this house of knowledge where truth is
obscured, where the breath of blown glass comes
not from the mouth of the creator & never from a people
blown to the four winds, the provenance of my body is proof:
We don't need halos to know God breathed us to life & hasn't inhaled since.
ode to dora maar
It wasn’t her fault
that man1 was so intimidated
by her talent he2 wanted
her to give up photography.
Nine years he3 painted
her, made her fight his wife
for his4 love, sold
canvases of her by selling
her out—making
bank on her anguish.
There was a man5
once who liked my poems
so much he6 stole
a line—my words sliding
through his7 pen.
When he8 posted them online under a pseudonym,
he9 bragged to me later
it was his10 most-
read & complimented.
When I told
him11 it wasn’t his12, that he13 had
no right to write
my words, he14 pretended
he15 had no idea
what I was on about.
I cried, became
his16 Weeping Woman—
tears distorting
my face for his17 inspiration.
Who among us
hasn’t looked at those cubist18
faces & thought,
I bet I could paint that?
Yet what artist
has heard another say
they could have
made their art, only
to reply:
Then why didn’t you?
I didn’t write
for years after he19 took
my words.
Sometimes the answer is
we were robbed;
we were taken from before
we were ever
given the chance
to make
what might have been.
1 Picasso
2 Doesn’t deserve
3 The attention
4 Of being named.
5 This man is obviously
6 Less significant.
7 Furthermore,
8 He doesn’t
9 Even write anymore.
10 Probably because
11 He was never
12 All that good to begin with.
13 On my pettier days,
14 I tell myself it’s because
15 Actually,
16 Fuck him, fuck them both.
17 Who cares?
18 I am tired of trying to understand shitty men
19 When muses are where the real talent lies.
Mandy Shunnarah (they/them) is an Appalachian and Palestinian-American writer in Columbus, Ohio. Their first book, Midwest Shreds: Skating Through America’s Heartland, was released in 2024, and their second book, a poetry collection titled We Had Mansions, is forthcoming in 2025. Read more at mandyshunnarah.com.