NASSER RABAH ~

 

Rage

It wasn't you they saw on the television screen, it wasn't you

as they filmed you coming out crumbled from the rubble,

who then was applauding and clamoring for death?

This is what war makes you: it takes your skin off and gives

you a tent, and like a crumpled piece of paper, it throws

your home out with the trash—it plucks your pink heart

and plants gunpowder stones, no wheat fields gleam in

your eyes from now on, no hills of olive groves dream

to be picked, no bunch of kids play on your shoulders,

no grass of remembrance sits with you in the sunset

of the house, nothing here or there except limitless

rage, boiling over to the end of time and distance,

it was not you; it was not a stream of water, it was

a wolf snarling underneath the rubble, wanting

to rip the flesh of these tanks with its teeth.

March 13, 2024

________________________________

Nasser Rabah

Gaza: The Poem Said Its Piece

Translated from the Arabic by

Ammiel Alcalay, Emna Zghal, Khaled Al-Hilli

City Lights Books, 2025

THE WORLD AFTER GAZA ~

 

P A N K A J   M I S H R A

     Penguin 2025

REFAAT ALAREER ~

 

REFAAT  ALAREER

If I Must Die

If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze —
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself —
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above,
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love.
If I must die
let it bring hope,
let it be a story.

OR Books, 2024

HOW THE WORLD FAILED TO STOP THE DESTRUCTION OF GAZA~

 

Language is damaged when demands to stop killing civilians are 'antisematic', when an army that dehumanizes its enemies is 'moral', when an enterprise of obliteration is a 'riposte', when a military operation openly conducted against Palestinian civilians is the 'Israel-Hamas war'. Thinking is suffocated when debates are prevented, lectures banned and exhibitions cancelled, when the police enter institutions of higher education and prosecutors are imposed to ensure orthodoxy. An oppressive atmosphere of suspicion and accusation has endangered freedom of speech.

— Didier Fassin 

R E A D   M E

    Verso, 2025

LISTEN TO BERNIE ~

 

     U.S. Senator, Vermont

RAJA SHEHADEH ~

 

R E A D   M E

     Other Press, 2024