Two Tongues by Lana Issam Ghannam, NWVS #149

Lana Issam Ghannam dares to create her identity from the ground, roots, tongues, hands, feathers, seeds, arms, and bodies that saturate her poems in this beautiful first collection. From the first poem, “America is a Ghost in Me,” to the last, “Two Tongues,” Ghannam invites us to walk with her through the difficult ways of moving as a Muslim in America. These poems are always tough, always direct, always complex, and always foraging their own path between the two worlds: “a current where both sides of the world meet / –the pull between two deserts / that have begun to drown together.”

–Terry Ann Thaxton

This stunning collection gives us the voice we need today: Fierce poems that navigate currents of language, culture, personal obligation, faith, and poetic landscape. A poet of Palestinian descent, Ghannam straddles the boundaries between parents, marriage, rituals, and traditions. With a striking tongue, she backbones these tender, demanding, beseeching poems, with roots, sprouted seed, leaves, and dirt against the body poetic: “There are darker days when the branches reach and thorn all of my muscle and squeeze.” These are important poems that question language, rest in faith, are keenly aware of the value of deep cultural tradition, yet fearlessly bang at the door of the universe.

–Judith Roney