To-Do Lists – Michigan Quarterly Review

To-Do Lists

Published in Issue 63.4: Fall 2024

You can purchase our Fall issue here

Wake up, don’t get up
“America” doesn’t need you
Open and reopen social media
Follow the news as they break
you
Think about your family in Gaza
Think about how much your nephews and nieces
grew without your doses of annoyance
Think about your friends
Think of the ones you forgot
to think about yesterday
Think about how much you let them down
Think about your future
Future seconds, days, months, years
Just keep thinking
Until thoughts become heavy
big blank blocks
Until breaths become heavy
big blank blocks
Hate yourself
Smile if today isn’t the day
you have to cut your nails
Ignore your hunger and thirst
for as long as possible
Ignore texts and emails
until it’s too late to answer
Get rid of extra thoughts
and extra things
Keep writing to-do lists
and call it poetry
Smile because you know it is
Use the bathroom every hour
Try to avoid writing poetry
on the toilet
Post “All Eyes on Yourselves”
It’s not only Rafah this time that’s burning
Hate the world, the whole world
Go back to “your” room
Remind yourself that you can’t hug yourself
Sleep, eyes shut but not locked
Repeat, don’t tell anyone
(Repeat, don’t tell anyone)
Keep praying the sun never rises again
Keep praying you never wake up tomorrow
Sleep like it’s the only thing
you know how to do
Sleep like you never slept before
Sleep until you’re tired again
Sleep until you’re dead.

Purchase our Fall 2024 issue, available in print and digital forms.

Yahya Ashour يحيى عاشور is an exiled award-winning Gazan poet, born on April 22, 1998. He is a 2022 honorary fellow at the University of Iowa and author of the e-book “A Gaza of Siege & Genocide”. He has a poetry collection and a children’s book in Arabic, and contributed to anthologies and journals. He read at over 33 U.S. universities, including Princeton, Stanford, UPenn, and UCLA. His poetry was translated into several languages, including Spanish, French, Japanese, and Bengali.

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