In tight-knit language, matter of fact yet deeply lyrical, Bell examines Israeli-Palestinian tensions by telling stories of the Jews who “named the land in blood and ink” and of Palestinians who’ve long tilled the same land to bursting.

–Library Journal

To hold the bird and not to crush her, that is the secret. Sand turned too quickly to cement and who cares if the builders lose their arms?… (read more)

Read on Poets.org

This is for Amal, whose name means hope, who thinks of each tree she’s planted like a child whose family has lived in the same place for a hundred years… (read more)

Featured in Calyx 263

He felt for his key the way he would feel for his limbs and was reassured. —Mahmoud Darwish

In the old ones with rot-mouth lingers the key The boy lost his fingers, his mouth sings the key… (read more)

Read on The Harvard Review

Once in a village that is burning because a village is always somewhere burning 

And if you do not look because it is not your village it is still your village… (read more)

First appeared in The Massachusetts Review