Tag: Palestine

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.

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Global Outcry

By Amal El-Sayed

 

A wave of blue and yellow—
A sea of sky and grain
Washed all over the world.
Braving snowstorms and epidemics,
You marched in the name of peace.

A row of strollers lying in wait
In Poland, in Slovakia.
Supplies, donations, support.
Homes—opening
Families—welcoming
The whole world—enclosing Ukraine with love.
So much love.

I applaud you for your humanity—
But I ask you:

Did you offer that same warm welcome to Syrian children
Who are slowly being chewed by hunger in patched tents?
Did you embrace the Syrian mothers with the same solidarity
Or did you leave them to freeze to death in bone-chilling camps?

Where were you when Iraqi women
Struggled to escape the blows and kicks and slaps
Of domestic abuse?
Or did their abayas make them not civilized enough for you?

Where were you when Afghan women
Cried hopelessly for help under the rule of terrorists?
Or did their burqas make them subhuman?

And pray tell—where were you when Mexican children
Were turned away at your borders?
Left to the gangs, the traffickers, the cartels!
Or did the color of their skin make them lesser?

Where was your outcry when Palestinians were
Displaced, tortured, executed, massacred—
Their blood fertilizing the land, their screams echoing through the sky.
Yet still, you turned them away.
Where was your welcome, your sympathy, your so-called humanity?

And did you forget the refugees from
Congo, Ethiopia, Sudan, Nigeria, Dominica, Haiti
Who walked through deserts and crossed perilous oceans
To reach YOU.
But all you did was turn your cheek and say:
Illegal, Criminal, Other.

 

Amal El-Sayed has an MA in English literature and is currently working on her PhD in English poetry. She is an assistant lecturer at Ain Shams University in Cairo, Egypt. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Poetry Pacific and Spillwords. Her short story “Unmask Me” is to be published by Wyldblood Press in October 2023.

Image credit: “Refugees in Despair” by Ani Bashar 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.