NOOR HINDI

I’m Bored I’m Lonely I’m Throwing a Party

This poem is an exploration of grief, desire and survival and is part of a current manuscript of poems examining the relationship between tenderness and heartbreak.

Like god, you are beautiful
& useless.

In the morning, every fire
alarm in my home will run
out of battery. I do not search
for the sound of their singing.

Dear red burst. Dear death. Dear blood
cutting through my knees.
I tried to stop living. Do you remember?
The kitchen sink was clogged. For days,
my heart’s futile song
a cruelty.

At the party, someone aims a squirt gun
full of whiskey at my face.
I’m talking to A about god, loneliness,
Islam’s thorny comfort.

Lord, I’ve done worse things
to my body. Lord, there is no god
but allah and the people I love
and worship as gods. Lord,
was it not faith
that kept me alive?

Last week, it rained so much
the street lights dimmed. The produce
decayed. The dead emerged
from the ground just to greet me.

I asked you: Are you afraid of death?
You asked me: Do I trust you?
You, who sees through cracked wind
shields. You, most violent shade of pink.

We’re no one’s heroes but our own
—eyes vulnerable as spider webs,
half shaitans, half gods,
the spaces between our fingers
a leaking roof.

Noor Hindi (she/her/hers) is a Palestinian-American poet and reporter. Her debut collection of poems, Dear God. Dear Bones. Dear Yellow was published by Haymarket Books. She is currently editing a Palestinian global anglophone anthology with George Abraham (Haymarket Books, 2024). She is a 2021 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellow. Follow her on Twitter @MyNrhindi.

MORE FROM SPRING 2023 (4:4)

PROSE

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This is for the Naming, Dacia Price (an excerpt)
A Conversation with Dacia Price, Maria S. Picone, Managing Editor

Across Dark Waters, Charlotte Stevenson
Awake at 2:58 AM Anticipating Eruption, Nathan King
Your Neighbor Your Lover, Sydney Kim
Notes on Grieving Gary, Dylan Smith
Thorns, Armaan Kapur

POETRY

I’m Bored I’m Lonely I’m Throwing a Party, Noor Hindi
Limbo, Cara Waterfall
Frog Prince Flops Under Scrutiny, V.A. Bettencourt
Foodsafe, Jade Liu
Spring 2021, Laura Villareal
Sometimes I Still Get Hungry, Rachel Mallalieu
Lent, Caitlyn Alario
20 Bars for Vitiligo, Alba Delia Hernández
Dinner Sonnet, Mimi Yang

ART

Facing It Together, Jack Bordnick
Eden, Margaret Karmazin
tanggal, Cinnamone Winchester/Sebastiàn Ungco
Message in a Bottle, Carella Keil
Inhibition, Grace Zhou
The Song of the Hope Seeker, Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad