Live Encounters Arab Women Poets & Writers June 2026
Trading Tiredness for Air, poems Hind Zituni.
Translated from Arabic by Dr. Salwa Gouda.
Trading Tiredness for Air
I never wrote a poem in my life.
The truth is
I just used to shove
heavy rocks off my chest,
and dance.
Dance like crazy.
Like I was trading all my tiredness for air,
like my body was shaking off its own shadow.
So I’m not the one who gets tired
sadness does.
A House of Tears
One poem, just one, is all it takes
to build a house out of living tears,
a house that holds the world up
so it doesn’t slip off its heel into the mud.
The poet
walks on a sea of grief,
and when he runs out of strength,
he drowns in it
like he never knew it was there.
On the black market,
he hangs his days on a clothesline of forgetting,
and comes back holding
a single, lonely rose
so his lover won’t die
that hand that used to save him.
He pawns his memory for a dream.
Every time he gets close,
the dream grows wider
like a homeland you can’t go back to.
The Jacaranda Tree
Tonight
I dream of nothing but you,
and the jacaranda tree
dropping its leaves on us
like a soft secret.
I drown in purple,
in the smell of your breath
as it wraps the moment
in a thin blanket of drowsiness.
Give me one letter of the alphabet
I’ll build a whole safe city from it,
then squeeze it into wine
that never gets old.
© Hind Zituni
Salwa Gouda is an Egyptian literary translator, critic, and academic at the English Language and Literature Department at Ain-Shams University. She holds a PhD in English literature and criticism. She received her education at Ain-Shams University and California State University in San Bernardino. Furthermore, she has published several academic books, including Lectures in English Poetry and
Introduction to Modern Literary Criticism, and others. She has also contributed to the translation of “The Arab Encyclopedia for Pioneers,” which includes poets, philosophers, historians, and men of letters, under the supervision of UNESCO. Also, her translated poetry anthology, entitled Dogs Pass Through My Fingers, was published recently through Alien Buddha Press in Arizona, USA. Additionally, her literary translations have been published in various international magazines.
Hind Zituni is a Syrian-born poet and novelist currently living in the United States. She specializes in teaching English to non-native speakers and regularly writes literary articles for various newspapers and magazines worldwide. Zituni has published four novels and five poetry collections. She received the Short Story Award in 2020 and the Naji Naaman Award in 2024. Her poetry has been translated into several languages, and she has also translated two books into English: a collaborative poetry collection and a selection of short stories.