By Sam Hamod

Splitting the moon
with phosophorous, they come,
night after night, whistling
into our dreams, crashing
into our bedrooms, smashing in
the roof of Aunt Zakia’s house, before
she could even get out
to cry for help–
we carried her, three of us, i
can’t remember how far it was
before we found the doctor, his hands
bloody and his eyes bloodshot, and
cussing, "Ya Shaitan, Ya IbnAlKalb,
Ya Israel, Shaitan,…" while he
tried to stench the flow
of blood from her head and right arm,
i don’t remember how long
we were there, or what he said after that,
i just remember i was dizzy, and i kept
hearing the whistle after whistle, after
whistle of the rockets, after a while
i didn’t know which were worse, ,the
one’s that hit our village
or the one’s i keep hearing in my head

– Shaitan, Arabic term for "devil", Ya IbnAlKalb, Arabic term for "son of a
dog"

(c: sam hamod, 2010)

– Sam Hamod is a poet who was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, has published 10 books of poems, the winner of the Ethnic Heritage Prize for Poetry, taught at The Writers Workshop of The U. of Iowa, Princeton, Michigan, Howard and edited THIRD WORLD NEWS in Washington, DC. He contributed this poem to PalestineChronicle.com. Contact him at: samhamod@sbcglobal.net.