You Can Be the Last Leaf

Finalist for the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award in Translation Translated from the Arabic and introduced by Fady Joudah, You Can Be the Last Leaf draws on two decades of work to present the transcendent and timely US debut of Palestinian poet Maya Abu Al-Hayyat. Art. Garlic. Taxis. Sleepy soldiers at checkpoints. The smell of trash on a winter street, before our wild rosebush, neglected / by the gate, / blooms. Lovers who dont return, the possibility that you yourself might not return. Making beds. Cleaning up vomit. Reading recipes. In You Can Be the Last Leaf, these are the ordinary and profoundsometimes tragic, sometimes dreamy, sometimes almost frivolousmoments of life under Israeli occupation. Here, private and public domains are inseparable. Desire, loss, and violence permeate the walls of the home, the borders of the mind. And yet that mind is full of its own fierce and funny voice, its own preoccupations and strangenesses. It matters to me, writes Abu Al-Hayyat, what youre thinking now / as you coerce your kids to sleep / in the middle of shelling: whether its coming up with plans / to solve the worlds problems, plans that eliminate longing from stories, remove exhaustion from groans, or dreaming of a war / thats got no war in it, or proclaiming that I dont believe in survival. In You Can Be the Last Leaf, Abu Al-Hayyat has created a richly textured portrait of Palestinian interiorityat once wry and romantic, worried and tenacious, and always singing itself.