TERROR COUNTER

2025 Longlist for the National Book Award for Poetry

A Most Anticipated Book of 2025 from Autostraddle, Vulture, and more

"An evocative, boundary-pushing reaction to the languages of terror that systematically undermine the lives of Palestinians." -Vulture

“In TERROR COUNTER's innovation, forms conceived from thwarted expectations present a multitude of realities.” —The Poetry Project

“From a queer Palestinian performance artist comes this debut poetry collection of Palestinian survival, imagination, preservation, and liberation.” —Autostraddle 

“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.” —Fady Joudah, author of [...]

“To tunnel through land is to become a root. To tunnel through language is to become its song. Fargo Nissim Tbakhi’s poetry does both, is both—the faithful becoming of the heartbeat. Because TERROR COUNTER is a fight to the LIFE! It is a fight against the state, the black site of American literature, the empire of possibilityeaters. It is a fight to undo being, to be for others, for all. And it is a fight for the right to dream of a future, the future, that is Palestine. Liberation is love poetry. Bring your heart, dear reader. Bring your crowbar.” —Brandon Shimoda, author of The Grave on the Wall

“In this debut collection electric with grief, rage, and love, Tbakhi enacts the liberatory possibilities of a language reclaimed. Through a variety of invented forms and stirring unravelings, these poems tunnel, excavate, eulogize, exclaim, and most elegantly imagine where we might go once we reject the dehumanizing gaze and obsessions of a crumbling empire and return to ourselves and to each other. This book will crack your heart open. Let it, let the light come pouring in.” —Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, author of Something About Living

"Fargo Nissim Tbakhi is one of the greatest minds of our generation." —Summabis

“Within these poems are a set of instructions for being human as praxis and for the futures that are made possible by living outside colonial imaginaries.” —Electric Literature