TO MY MOTHER | THOSE WHO LIVE IN WHITE HOUSES SHOULD NOT THROW BOMBS | No Vacuum Here | Two Hundred and Forty Seconds of Our Time

TO MY MOTHER

for Ellen Poplowiecz Wright whose great grandparents went up in smoke in the nazi ovens in Poland – and who died an unconditional pro Palestinian

Mama
I think of you
as you lay dying
with an invitation
to visit Palestine
at your bedside

I think of your not letting go
of that beacon
that reality –
my legacy

I think of Gaza –
your last love
as you departed
so gently

Mama,
Gaza today
is a people-protected butterfly
more determined than ever
to survive
the colonial climate
of Apartheid

Gaza sends endless ripples
of resistance
to the world
and, Mama,
you are sad
but smiling

(c) Julia Wright. October 28 2023. All Rights Reserved to Susan Abulhawa’s Palestine Playground Project.

 

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THOSE WHO LIVE IN WHITE HOUSES SHOULD NOT THROW BOMBS

Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones. Old adage

those who live
in White Houses
should not throw bombs

Biden
and
Netanyahu
as thick as war-crazed thieves
bemoan Israeli hostages
in Gaza –
hostages they claim are held
underground
in a maze of dark tunnels

but no mention is made
of the invisible men and women
and juveniles
hidden away
in the U.S. of A. –
our political prisoners –
their hostages –
their own human animals
bombed
and buried
under decades
of carceral oppression
media black-out
and silent suppression

google maps
cannot detect it
but the world is strewn
with Gaza archipelagos
emerging

(c) Julia Wright. October 28 2023. All Rights.

 

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No Vacuum Here

the empire builders
think
they can incarcerate
all of us
in a prison
called SCI Vacuum

they
imagine
they can vacate
our memory
our history
our dreams
our bodies
to take our land

little do they know
our land
will never be a vacant lot
but bears the indelible traces
the bones
the fertile ashes
of their inner Middle Passage

little do they know
we carry the land
wherever we go

little do they know
they cannot
arrest
the crowds
of our ancestors marching

little do they know
that as Thay taught
there is no such thing
as a vacuum
no such thing
as an empty
glass –
it is full of air
the very air we need
to persist
to resist
to exist

(c) Julia Wright. October 30 2023. All Rights Reserved to the medical needs of the children of Gaza – 47% of the population

 

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Two Hundred and Forty Seconds of Our Time

each day
we wake up
to a sky
as yet innocent
of planes and smoke
but
our sense of time
is bombed

I no longer trust
my digital watch
powered
by the very coltane
that countless children
faraway
in Congolese villages
died to extract

I pace my morning
with
the chatter of a dying species –
carefree Western children
on their way
to schools
that are not targeted

My timepiece –
the background drumbeat
of my day –
has become
the burning knowledge
that
every two hundred and forty seconds
a child in Gaza
is assassinated

(c) Julia Wright. October 31 2023. All Rights Reserved to the children of Gaza – 47% of the population