Fady Joudah

There is a gap.

And so as a child, you encounter this and you're like, what just happened?

So a memory is created, a feeling, and also a disparity that you have to bridge.

And I feel like that's how these things enter the poem because ultimately for my existence as a Palestinian in the 20th or 21st century or whatever, this has something to do with it, that I am also always, particularly in English, bridging a gap

Who here pronounces it Mimesis?

And who... Come on.

And who does Mimesis?

Oh, you're not raising... Oh, there you go, okay.

I was going to say it.

Okay.

Well, I was a mimesis person.

There are two types of people in the world.

My daughter wouldn't hurt a spider that had nested between her bicycle handles.

For two weeks, she waited until it left of its own accord.

If you tear down the web, I said, it will simply know this isn't a place to call home and you'd get to go biking.

She said, that's how others become refugees, isn't it?

This morning, I don't know how, an inch-long baby frog entered my house during the extermination of human animals live on TV.

I recognized the baby's dread.

It leapt into shadows under the couch into my shoe.

My son was watching.