To Syrian Children – A Poem
By Sonnet Mondal You all are culpable— for wending your way to schools for going to hospitals, for playing in open spaces and for keeping at your dreams within a country in rags. Yes, you […]
Poetry
My Sisters and Brothers, Don’t You, Can’t You, Won’t You, See? – A Poem
By Stephen Brackens Brinkley We are all interconnected We are all interdependent We are all part of the One My Sisters and Brothers, Don’t you see? Every microcosm is reflective of the macrocosm As above […]
Systematic Dehumanization – A Poem
By Stuart Rees (To record a young Gazan student’s characteristically gutsy six week wait, with her two-year-old son, for permission to exit Gaza via Israel to Jordan, eventually having to escape through the Rafah crossing […]
The Kiss of Life – A Poem
By Chris Lane is a warm welcome breeze from the womb, for kittens and kids a mother’s tongue for desert life, water for us the kiss of love. living is an enormous void an incalculable, […]
The Hooded Crow of Jerusalem – A Poem
By Niall McDevitt at the Citadel of Jerusalem built by John Hyrcanus I there is barbed wire and yellow weeds the hooded crow of Jerusalem calls from the Minaret of the Mosque, raw […]
The Familiar Stranger – A Poem
By Aida Qasim It was neither an exceptional nor particularly mundane morning but I was not the same The bashful sun cautiously lifted the white shroud hovering above Ramallah’s towering skyline Memories nurtured and cajoled […]
Israeli Radio Chief Summoned on ‘Controversial’ Programme on Darwish
The late Palestinian poet and icon, Mahmoud Darwish, has stirred controversy in Israel eight years after his death after Army Radio aired a show about him as inciting terrorism. Israeli defence ministry yesterday issued a […]
When Time Fails, Family Heals – A Poem
(In 1995, Osama ElBorno, the author’s father, was shot in the head by an Israeli soldier on the third day of Eid, while visiting a friend in Gaza. His last words were, “Is everyone okay?” […]
Palestine, An Unfinished History – A Poem
By George Polley They came from Europe, these people, single and in families, eager to settle. They said they were returning home, though we had never seen them, were here for generations stretching back for a thousand […]
Stolen Joys – A Poem
By Nour El-Borno – Gaza Moons shine through her eyes As she walks past her house: Here, she once laughed; There, she once cried. “I remember,” she whispers. The dark hours that […]
Gaza: Resistance Through Poetry
By Ramzy Baroud “(At dawn) … I will resist … (Since) upon the wall there is still a white sheet … And my fingers are yet to (completely) dissolve.” This is a translated verse from […]
IUG Graduates Celebrate American Literature in Gaza
By Yousef M. Aljamal – Gaza A group of female graduates at the Islamic University of Gaza, in collaboration with the American Consulate in Jerusalem, organized American Literature Day on May 5, 2016, at Gaza’s […]
Love Letter to a Comrade – A Poem
By Aida Qasim I knew you long before the planets determined their order Awakening a higher purpose in me And unearthing a consciousness of a noble cause Patiently you listened as I explored my relationship […]
Poets Saving Palestine: I Remember My Name
Reviewed by Stuart Rees (Vacy Vlazna, ed., I remember my name – Poetry by Samah Sabawi, Ramzy Baroud, Jehan Bseiso. Novum Publishing, 2016) Poetry’s Panacea Conditions on the West Bank, in Gaza, in East Jerusalem and […]
Dima’s Eyes – A Poem
By Aida Qasim Eyes like an unfinished poem possess my spirit They rise the moon out of its slothiness Shaking away the stillness of my pillow I shudder and solicit a memory: Sweet mint tea […]
In Jerusalem – Poems
By Rachel Astarte In Jerusalem There is a quiet I am looking for from bulldozers from blastings from smoldering anger There is a place I have never seen although I have imagined it during childhood […]
Memory is the Cactus of Exile – A Poem
By Aida Qasim Why do you laugh like a giddy school girl in your mid life? And why does your face rebel against the artist’s chisel? Growing cactus in your garden rather than respectable hyacinth […]
Ode to Lifta – A Poem
By Aida Qasim Even Neruda’s birds that once roamed from sea to sea have flown to other continents The stones I once rested against during the olive harvest seem to sit by indifferently as another kingdom […]
Reflections on Palestine – A Poem
By Stephen Brackens-Brinkley & Dorothy Dot Milnes-Simm Beautiful the olive trees that grew in Palestine, and beautiful the buildings rising up through branches fine. Wonderful the people that were thrown into a cell Israel’s the […]
‘I Have Been Wronged!’ – A Poem
By Eugene Sigaloff “I have been wronged!” This is my theme, and from This theme I’ve woven the tapestry of my life, I have been wronged, by all those faced around me, I have been […]
On the Occasion of World Poetry Day Haidar Eid Sings for Detained Poet Ashraf Fayyadh!
On the Occasion of World Poetry Day (21.3.2016), Gaza- based human rights activists released an amateur video-clip in support of the Palestinian poet Ashraf Fayyadh, who has been detained in a Saudi prison since January […]
‘That light within will make me stay’ – In Compassionate Memory of Rachel Corrie – A Poem
By Eugene Sigaloff March 16, 2003 (I): The View from the Caterpillar That Rachel Corrie, stupid cunt, She thought that she’d alone confront A Caterpillar armed with steel, She thought that she could make a […]
Children at Sea – A Poem
By Eugene Sigaloff I We sail upon the ocean, The sun is overhead, The boat is gently rocked, As if I were in bed. The others all around me, They seem to be afraid, I […]
FA LES TEEN – A Poem
By Uzma Falak My grandmother wove dreams on her spinning wheel, invoked you in her songs. I memorized the rhyme. My mother treasured your olives— a keepsake of the Blessed Land, a relic I never touched. […]
Dead Conscience – A Poem
By Zulfiqar Ali Bhatti (To the so-called champions of the human rights) No matter if you lose sight and see not, But what to those who vision clear claim, Can see pebbles in the children’s […]
Summer in Gaza – A Poem
By Uzma Falak We are left to count again massacres, dead eyes harboring a dream, burnt throats on the brink of a an anthem charred olives, faithful lips and fingers— maimed. Seraj- 8, Bassim-10, Moussa-16, […]
Variations – A Poem
By Ramona Wadi reciting the vacillations of exile in decades marked by the erosion of twilight a sonorous punctuation of language lacerated by fire and bludgeoning touching nothing but memory an insatiable horizon, mingling with […]
When Kathy Kelly Went to Jail
By Gary Corseri [Kathy Kelly is the co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. She has traveled to Iraq and Gaza during wartime–to bear witness and give comfort. The author of “Other Lands Have Dreams,” she […]
An Apology from Muslims to Humanity – A Poem
By Amir Darwish We are sorry for everything that we done to contribute to humanity’s suffering Sorry for algebra and the letter X Sorry for all the words we throw at you; amber, candy, chemistry, […]
In the Desert – A Poem
By Nasser Barghouty By the sea under frightened skies of shone past and stolen tomorrows stands your heart alone by the damned shore to love and last it trembles just once more for that which […]
