Tag: anti-war poetry

Welcome to Amplified Voices, a Special Issue of Writers Resist

Since the Vietnam War, violent conflict has been made visible to even the least likely victims—on televisions, then phones, now raging across social media—and its representations are laden with passionate opinions, well-informed and not. From politicians and universities around the globe to PEN America to Oscar Awards speeches, emotionally bloody conflict about conflict reigns over solutions, while innocent civilians suffer.

Hence our enthusiasm, and a bit of trepidation, when former Writers Resist editor DW McKinney suggested this special issue. DW wrote, “I really want to help create an archive so to speak of writers who represent countries and regions that are actively being destroyed right now.” Would we be open to this, DW asked?

“Of course” was the obvious response, and so it is that we celebrate the launch of “Amplified Voices.”

We are grateful to all those who bared their trauma to the submission process; to guest editor DW McKinney; to Writers Resist editors Debbie Hall, Sara Marchant and René Marzuk; and to the brave and generous writers whose work is published herein.

Our profound thanks,
K-B Gressitt, publisher

Amplified Voices Contents

“From the Editor of Amplified Voices” by DW McKinney

“They Are All Terrorists” by Lori Yeghiayan Friedman

Two Poems by Saheed Sunday

“Caught in the Crossfire of a Madding Crowd” by J.D. Harlock

“Gauze” by Lisa Suhair Majaj

“Ofrenda for Resistance” by Jordan Alejandro Rivera

“In Pillars, the Prized City” by Maira Faisal

“Zoo” by N. de Vera

Two Poems by Lonav Ojha

“18 Jennas” by Jenna Mayzouni

“Jannah is a single strand. My father is the complementary prognosticator strand.” by Abdulrazaq Salihu

 

Map credit: International Crisis Group, Crisis Watch Map.

Two Poems by Saheed Sunday

a daggerpoint

& what is salvation 
if not how we give our body to beauty
to the memory of what does not rust
—Othuke Umukoro

 

the Sunday before this one, the catechist
warned about hellfire and its odor of smoky taste.
he said it would come unto us like the clouds,
breaking off whatever remains of our clear sky.
the next Sunday, i hear the flowers in my head wilt.
i smell the aftershave of smokes and i bury my
head into my brown palms, begging to be virused out
of all my sins. apparently, what the catechist didn’t
warn us about is that it isn’t only hell that breaks
the bond between a father and his son. the heavy
artillery fire of war can do the same.

in my mother tongue, a poem is a battlefield.
here: every stanza of this poem is an equivalent
of the demarcation line between who survived the last
war and who didn’t. here: every line in this poem
is an equivalent of the rows of my brothers and sisters’
bodies buried by their own homes. here: every word
in this poem is a noose around we survivors’ necks:
a prayer translated into a gun or a death toll.

this stanza is intentionally left blank for all the bodies
we lost to the soil and gun wounds.

something in my head is whispering. it says
in Darfur, every civilian is a moving bait slowed
by thorns in front of a cocked gun. it says in Merowe,
tears are the new ways to know you haven’t been
claimed yet by the fighter jets roaring in the sky above.
for now, ignore the dead butterflies falling off your
chest and supplicate to god. hell is not a thing
you want to witness twice.

 

In which a country becomes a song that dies on your skin

in this war of a country,
flames die and are reborn as hell,
songs die and are reborn as bullets.

this is a way to say
that everything cool, here,
becomes balls of fire raining

our heads into confusion.
once as a boy, i sat and watched
how a home can turn into the mouth

of a tiger that eats men alive;
how a home can become the mouth
of a grave that swallows its own sons,

& dead bodies, & dead roses.
growth didn’t come with seasonings.
i do know now why my father heaves

a large breath every night before
he shuts his eyes.
that must have been the weight

of his grief leaving his body
till the next day. today i brought out
a palette, and painted quranic verses

on every part of my body that hasn’t burned
to the heated flame of this hell i call a country.

i know what it means to be born
in the middle of a war. i know what it
means to become mouths slashed into songs

of peace & harmony. fa inna maha-l-usri yusrah.
this darkness that illumes the sky will soon
be chased by light. & the breath i hold

will be ridden of every scent of the war
i’ve fought. lord, let victory songs find
a space between my jaws tomorrow.

lord, right this story till there is no space left.

 

Saheed Sunday, NGP V, a Nigerian writer, is a Pushcart Prize nominee, a Best of the Net nominee, a Star Prize awardee, and a Hilltop Creative Arts Foundation member. He has his work published in Lolwe, Strange Horizons, Trampset, The Deadlands, North Dakota Quarterly, Shrapnel Magazine, and others.

Photo credit: Bruno Alcantara via a Creative Commons license.

A note from Writers Resist

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

 

In Pillars, the Prized City

By Maira Faisal

“You ask: What is the meaning of ‘homeland’?

“They will say: The house, the mulberry tree, the chicken coop, the beehive, the smell of bread, and the first sky.

“You ask: Can a word of eight letters be big enough for all of these, yet too small for us?”

— from In the Presence of Absence by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish

 

V. Hajj (pilgrimage)
Stare.

Lock your eyes with mine,
my irises your kaleidoscope

to seek the fractal of Palestine,
absorb the reflection of rubble
staining a land of holy sites,

as apathy-plagued publics
state politics aren’t their forte
while forts, any flickers of shelter,
are licked by the blister of flames,

as the meek, soothed, enchanted
by time’s beguiling hands, (too
often) reject martyrs for monsters:
why run from dark, little things
when one can become a reaper?

IV. Sawm (fasting)
Gaze upon Gaza—

setting sun, a crimson cast
on a mother wiping blood off tile
delicately, lovingly, whispering it
is her Muhammad’s, her son’s last

scrubs clinging to a physician
saying postpartum equals
a hysterectomy, not recovery,
axing branches to save trees

small hearts clattering in small rib cages,
pumping—tick-tick-tick-tick-tick
till they still and stop, slumped bodies
exceeding 5,000 in forty days

children, his flesh and soul,
sealed in grocery bags as severed
limbs, sans warmth and dreams,
visit their Papa in his

carpet bomb flashes and
white phosphorus clouds and
climbing death tolls and

hospital attacks and
church bell chimes and

pets sunk in soot and

and

Israeli officials cheer,
soldiers dance,
civilians chant, “Who has no
electricity, food, water?”

because both sides are
blackened, empty-stomached,
longing for civility

but one thinks the other savages
and ravages, yes, one thirsts for water,

the other hungers for blood.

III. Zakat (charity)
The ummah is one:

“When any limb aches,
the whole body reacts
with sleeplessness and fever.”

Boycotts and banners,
we will not mind manners,

and are marching in streets

Warsaw, Ottawa, Rome,
Lahore, Dublin, Washington,
Istanbul, Doha, Eindhoven

posting for peace

#freepalestine
#savegaza
#stopapartheid

forgoing niceties

“There are NO Two Sides to Genocide”
“End the Palestinian Holocaust”
“Bombing Civilians is a War Crime.”

We, the phantom feet of Palestine,
bastions that won’t sterilize speech
nor forget grotesque portraits of grief—

the tempest-tost, we hear,
and offer aid and alms,
support and a salam.

II. Salah (prayer)
Injuries like rotten peach flesh,
cries absconding sinew,

each second expiates sins,
each breath, an act of worship.

Fajr, Dhuhr, Asr, Maghrib, Isha’a,
takbir, qiyyam, ruku, sujud, tashahud,

dawn, noon, midday, dusk, nightfall,
stand, recite, bow, prostrate, sit.

Death lies in the sky.
Palestine rises as it’s razed.

I. Shahada (faith)
In wisps, it sinks from welkin,
seething and seizing around
the cracks of the prized city,
lodging into stalled lungs,
a tide, a tether,

a profession of faith,
smile of iman before burial,
another seed of watermelon:
tough as rind, sweet as fruit,

red as a phoenixing dawn,
with a spring-dandelion sun
cawing wondrously,

“From the river to the sea,
Palestine will be free.”

Stare where, from the debris,
an iris grieves a poppy,

and opens like a cupped palm.

 

Maira Faisal is a Kentucky Youth Poet Laureate representative, a sophomore at Northern Kentucky University, and a writer. Her work has been recognized by multiple university journals, Hanging Loose Press, and the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. As a Pakistani American and Muslim, her pieces often address Islamophobia—especially as it relates to current events such as the Palestinian genocide and Kashmiri repression.

Photo credit: Marius Arnesen via a Creative Commons license.

A note from Writers Resist

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

 

Jannah is a single strand. My father is the complementary prognosticator strand.

By Abdulrazaq Salihu

3’                                                                                                                                                5’
Jannah has seven gates.                                             My father is dead. A dirty cutlass
My people would enter through all.                           Stabbed into his flesh. My father
Jannah is thirsty.                                                         Is dead. Gun to the head, bullet
My people are water. Jannah is shahada.                    To his skull. My father is dead
My people died in sujood. Jannah is a                        I cannot unsee the terror. A flood
Myth. My people are the fate. Jannah                         Cleanses itself with my father’s blood
Is the road, my people are the destinations.               My father is dead. Who did this to me
Jannah is a miracle by the mouth of a                        Father is gone. Gun too soon. Gone.
Wound. My people are casualties.                              The Lokoja sands open and swallow
Jannah is a gun, my people are bullets.                      My father, but he’s only gone when I
Shoot your shot or give the gun,                                Believe. My brother sees Pa in dreams
Jannah is silence. My people                                      I tell him dreams are only dreams until
Are dead. My people are gone.                                   We believe. My father is gone. Jannah
My people are pebbles                                               Is jannah because my father is gone,
The size of light. Jannah                                            Because light left us black,
Is a gift. My people unwrap. Jannah                           Because my father is a blue light
Is touch. My people: shy flowers, fold.                        Full of tenderness. My father is dead
Jannah is poison. My people are milk.                        Jannah is jannah. My father is jannah.
Jannah is black stripe against the skin                       My father is the only door: enter
Of white music. My people are songs.                        Through shahada. Through my father’s
My people are sins. Jannah is forgiveness.                 Delicate skin. Jannah is an RNA strand,
Jannah is jannah because my father died.                  My father is the complement.
Jannah needs my father………………………………………My father needs his people.

Jannah is the gap between my thumb and index.       My people are songs the size of quiet.
5’                                                                                                                                                        3’

 

Abdulrazaq Salihu, TPC I, is a Nigerian poet and member of the Hilltop Creative Arts Foundation. He won the Splendours of Dawn Poetry Foundation’s poetry contest, BPKW Poetry Contest, Poetry Archive Poetry Contest, Masks Literary Magazine Poetry Award, Nigerian prize for teen authors (poetry), Hilltop Creative Writing Award, and others. He has received fellowships and residencies from IWE Writers Residency, SPRING, and elsewhere. He has work published or forthcoming in Strange Horizons, Unstamatic, Bracken, Poetry Quarterly, Rogue, B’K, Jupiter Review, Black Moon Magazine, Angime, Grub Street, and elsewhere. He tweets @Arazaqsalihu; Instagram, @Abdulrazaq._salihu. He’s the author of Constellations (poetry) and Hiccups (prose).

Photo credit: BBC, under “Fair Use” for commentary.

A note from Writers Resist

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.