Fargo Nissim Tbakhi
“Craft is a machine built to produce and reproduce ethical failures; it is a counterrevolutionary machine.”
Fargo Nissim Tbakhi
© Jonathan Aprea
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“An evocative, boundary-pushing reaction to the languages of terror that systematically undermine the lives of Palestinians.”
“From a queer Palestinian performance artist comes this debut poetry collection of Palestinian survival, imagination, preservation, and liberation.”
“Anyone who understands poetry as a search for liberation, whatever the level of that liberation, will hold Terror Counter as compass. Filled with fierce lyric tenderness and clear-eyed commitment to revolutionary aesthetic, Terror Counter is devoted to the redemption of the self from a world ready to usurp this resistance. Fargo Nissim Tbakhi is a Palestinian poetic being of the most natural order. Just wait until you arrive at his elegy for his father. If you’re lucky, you will understand what Sirhan Sirhan means. If you’re lucky, Tbakhi’s performance will let you taste what free is.”
Fargo Nissim Tbakhi is a queer Palestinian-American performance artist and writer. His debut poetry collection, Terror Counter (Deep Vellum, 2025) was longlisted for the National Book Award. His next book, Antigone. Velocity. Salt., is forthcoming from Deep Vellum in 2027.
He is the winner of the Ghassan Kanafani Resistance Arts Prize, a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, and a Taurus. He has received fellowships from Rhizome DC, VisArts, Desert Nights Rising Stars, Halcyon Arts Lab, Mosaic Theater, and RAWI. His writing appears in Foglifter, Mizna, Peach Mag, Apex Magazine, Strange Horizons, the Shallow Ends, Prolit, and select bags of Nomadic Grounds Coffee. His performance work has been programmed at OUTsider Fest, INTER-SECTION Solo Fest, the Rachel Corrie Foundation’s Shuruq Festival, the Alwun House Monster’s Ball, Mosaic Theater, and has been supported by the Arizona Commission on the Arts.
In an interview with the Poetry Project, he was asked what makes him feel loved as a Palestinian: “It comes through as a kind of trust—I don’t have to ask for love almost, right? What does it mean for the contours of someone’s love for Palestinians, or any marginalized community, to be wholly inclusive of the obligations that come with that love. I think love comes with obligations. Particularly for Palestinians, it comes with obligations that make the person who is committing to love us dangerous. In specific ways, I feel loved when someone cooks for me. Or, when I can not talk about things with someone—when there’s not a pressure to be reactive to the kind of dailiness of brutality that does require a constant analysis and response. Having spaces where I can just trust that someone already knows those things and shares the commitments that I have. And then we can just be silent together.”
He lives in Washington DC.
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Terror Counter
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