The Specimen's Apology

by George Abraham

“Searing away binaries, demolishing the calcified partitions between halves—this is George Abraham’s the specimen’s apology. Boy/man, man/woman, history/present, conflict/occupation, English/Arabic, poetry/visual art—the gulf between each is breached, shrunk, erased, widened, warped. ‘I am always translating,’ Abraham tells us in one poem—and it is the wild desperate yearning of the translator, working in vain to achieve perfect fidelity to a source, that powers these poems: ‘if desire is, / as my language translates, a moon, / let this body be the satellite.’” —Kaveh Akbar

“From the first, devastating poem (‘i touch myself & do not leak gold’), George Abraham’s poems bristle with alchemy, a narrative of love, history, family, and Palestine that pulses with longing. ‘You cannot know the way you split galaxies/with a single breath,’ he says, a prophecy that unfolds throughout the collection, where the speaker reclaims himself, his grief and—yes—his land, over and over. Juxtaposed with Leila Abdelrazaq’s startlingly evocative artwork, the specimen’s apology is a fearless, riveting excavation of self and other.” —Hala Alyan

“In the specimen’s apology George Abraham writes with a sharp elegance about lineage, about inheritance, about what gets passed down, and what doesn’t. What’s erased. What’s obscured. What’s locked away. I get the sense of Rubik’s Cube-ing, searching for the right sequence of words or images or structures to make sense of absence, and in doing so, he makes a beautiful, furious, and crackling new kind of sense. His writing smacks my feelings right across the face.” —Tommy Pico

Genres: Poetry, LGBT, Queer

64 pages, Paperback

First published January 11, 2019

About the author

George Abraham (they/هو) is a Palestinian American poet, essayist, critic, performance artist. They are the author of When the Arab Apocalypse Comes to America (Haymarket, 2026) and Birthright (Button Poetry, 2020), which won the Arab American Book Award and was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. They are the executive editor of Mizna, and co-editor of HEAVEN LOOKS LIKE US: Palestinian Poetry (Haymarket, 2025). They are a graduate of Northwestern’s Litowitz MFA+MA program, and teach at Amherst College as a Writer-in-Residence.

Reviews

[Laura Sackton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the most inventive books of poetry I've read in some time. It was hard, in the best sense, in the sense that these poems are work to read, and so they should be. The things Abraham has to say--about being a queer person, about being Palestinian-American, about bodies and desire and trauma and geography--are complex and layered and deserve rigor. But at the same time, these poems are filled with lines that just cut me, that immediately grabbed me and took my breath away.

For example: "once, a language failed me & I hadn't a home/to claim in my own throat--" and "some days I cannot distinguish/desire/& extinction--every love of mine demands blood/shed of a hunter/'s lineage" It's a book that is both visceral and analytical, intimate and academic. It's remarkable.

Abraham uses algebraic equations in these poems. Some of them are written to be read right to left. There are footnotes written only in Arabic. There are words crossed out. In one poem they replace all pronouns with FREE PALESTINE. The result is something totally unique, something that demands attention, poetry that is heartbreaking and angry and playful and riveting and strange. It's close and distant at the same time. The writing sometimes refuses to allow outsiders in and sometimes the writing is deeply vulnerable. The whole thing is just brilliant; even the poems that did not immediately make sense to me, or that didn't grab me emotionally, left an impact.

[Maya Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

George’s collection of poetry is a detailed account of the power of erasure and its intersections between Palestinian identity and queer identity. It is a critique of ethnocentrism as well an act of reclamation. “The specimen is biting back,” and they bite back hard. It’s worth your time to read.

[Renée · Rating 5 out of 5]

Palestine liberation = liberation for all

[Kiki · Rating 5 out of 5]

"there will always be a universe in your mind & in that universe, there will always be a Palestine with children laughing."

stunning read

[Siani-Simone Ammons · Rating 5 out of 5]

"tell me about this / history of anxiety & i want to say it is / my blood; my veins, the church crowded / in the aftermath & is that not desire? / to crave most a coping which un-empties / the body ."

wow. wow. wow. wow. wow. stunning. i think that this might be the most breathtaking collection of poetry that i've ever read. so incisive. so cutting. so remarkable. so heavy. sososo many sos. mel arthur told me that i've been obsessed with spacing lately & george knows how to create spacing just as simply as other writers write the letter "a" onto a page. i am a mere novice at spacing, happy to learn from the greatest. george abraham's a genius that inspires so much insecure admiration in me, i am incredibly grateful to have the chance to take a class with them next semester & look forward to the growth that will be foisted upon my being.

[Kelsey May · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book so much. These poems cover, as much of George’s work does, heritage, Palestinian-American identity, queerness, and place, themes which are both difficult to publish in today’s ever-increasing xenophobic and homophobic climate, and which are so, so important and valuable to read. George is an expert poet; his poems are lyrical and burst with sound and delicious word choice. I am so grateful to look up to lines like “i found home in your type of empty” and “since this poem is about memory, it is discontinuous by necessity…” George is clever and also innovative; throughout this collection, he coins new ways to combine two parts to become a greater whole. I highly recommend this collection to readers and especially writers of poetry.

[Sarah Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Powerful poems exploring identity, language, home and queerness as part of the queer, Palestinian diaspora. CN for addiction, trauma, homophobia, colonisation, war, violence, death. Plays with layout/format in interesting and challenging ways. Would recommend.

[Ewan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Astounding. I could not put it down.