Jessica Abughattas

Oct 7, 2024 | thenation.com | Jessica Abughattas

Can we count on you? In the coming election, the fate of our democracy and fundamental civil rights are on the ballot. The conservative architects of Project 2025 are scheming to institutionalize Donald Trump’s authoritarian vision across all levels of government if he should win. We’ve already seen events that fill us with both dread and cautious optimism—throughout it all, The Nation has been a bulwark against misinformation and an advocate for bold, principled perspectives.

Jul 22, 2024 | poetryfoundation.org | Jessica Abughattas

Here in the decomposed granite and desertscape, a frontier town on the horizon for me and the old west iconography I carry like a tissue or an old receipt. I’m damned by the land I love. I’m the one doing the damning. I’m no friend of oblivion anymore. Every day, I wake up and feel deeply flawed. For these, I have room in my life: a standup comedian, a poet, a painter, a passionate kisser, women sitting in cafés alone disrupting equilibrium. Here, homes are made of wood and stucco.

Jul 16, 2024 | poetryfoundation.org | Jessica Abughattas

The winter I leave him, I ask my parents to consider me their oldest son. To bend the rules. I could be a little tree, late to flourish, focused on my underground career. I tell them to buy me a house. They’re 15 years divorced. We’re sitting around my mother’s kitchen table. My father and I smoke. My father: Remember, this is the second time. As though I could forget: I have no use for houses since I’ve refused to raise children.

Jul 15, 2024 | beta.poetryfoundation.org | Jessica Abughattas

Neighbors pass, two lines of smoke in hooded sweatshirts, from the sober living house next door, as I stand in the front yard watering dirt. I ask little of the garden— mere inspiration—working my shovel into bare earth. While witnesses in neckties carry scriptures, county sheriff circles the block. A couple fights in a hot car. They get out of the car and back into the car.

May 28, 2024 | theoffingmag.com | Joshua T. Nguyen |Jessica Abughattas |Justin Rovillos Monson

I once heard the poet Trương Trần before reading a poem about Walt Whitman say something like, It’sone thing to be in love with Walt Whitman; it’s another thing to want to fuck Walt Whitman. I fall justshort of being in love with Leslie Cheung. Like love love — the way you want someone to love love youback and you’d be happy together. Like happy happy — the way young-love emotion plus aestheteequals adventuring.