Tag: Israel

Endless War

By Linda Bamber

Cassandra swore there was no Gulf of Tonkin
but of course
no one believed her.
She knew the Trojan Horse was loaded with death
and that there were no WMD’s in Iraq

and if Paris, her brother, stole Helen
Troy would fall
and all its people be enslaved.
Then the Pentagon Papers came out.
Didn’t I . . . ? said Cassandra when people were shocked.

Now infanticide
hostage-taking
retaliation beyond imagination.
Genocide. Starvation. 

Cassandra tears her hair.
Since Balfour’s birth
(frantic, disbelieved)

she’s tried to tell us this
is what would be
from the river to the sea.

Poet’s Note
In classical texts, Cassandra was admired by the god Apollo, who gave her the gift of prophecy. In a different mood, he added the curse that no one would believe her.
The Balfour Declaration of 1917 is generally referenced as the moment when Britain decided it would suit its geo-political interests to establish a Jewish Protectorate in the Middle East.

Linda Bamber is a poet and a Professor of English at Tufts University. Both her poetry collection, Metropolitan Tang, and her fiction collection, Taking What I Like, were published by David R. Godine, Publisher. Widely excerpted and anthologized, her critical book on Shakespeare, Comic Women, Tragic Men: Gender and Genre in Shakespeare, was published by Stanford University Press. Bamber has published in periodicals such as The Harvard Review, The Nation, Ploughshares, The New York Times Book Review, The Kenyon Review, The Florida Review, and The Missouri Review. She is currently writing a novella based on the cross-country expedition of Lewis and Clark. 

Photo credit: “Trojan Horse” by Terra Incognita! via a Creative Commons license.

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God in Hiding

By Kayla Blau

 

Our five-year-old fingers plucked mancala beads,
wove white flower crowns,
blew dandelion seed wishes.
Our Barbies knew no god.
Our families spoke nothing of politics.
Sleepovers at hers were cardamom and allspice,
steaming lamb nestled under mounds of rice, fried eggplant, labneh and cucumber.
Sleepovers at mine, sustained by cardboard box macaroni and cheese,
spoons slick with I Can’t Believe it’s Not Butter.
In middle school, her AIM screen name read jordanianprincess91.
Later, she told me her parents fibbed, spun stories of Jordanian roots
rather than risk the reclamation of “Palestinian” in our majority-white suburb.
My ancestors hid the same, cut the “stein” from our last name,
the trade-offs the hunted make for survival, for safety.
Later still, ICE agents forced Leila’s parents’ hand,
plucked her family from U.S suburbia back to East Jerusalem.
When I visited her,
Holy Land revealed
metal cages, Jews-only streets,
protestors spouting “Death to Arabs” in the same language my ancestors prayed in.
What of apartheid is holy?
What god reigns here?

 

Kayla Blau (she/her) is a queer writer and facilitator based in Seattle, WA. Her work can be found in The Seventh Wave, The Stranger, Crosscut, and South Seattle Emerald, among others. Her poetry and personal essays are included in anthologies such as Emerald Reflections, Writing for Peace: Resistance Issue, and Wanderlust. More of her work can be found at www.keepgoing.press.

Photo credit: Kashfi Halford 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.