SUSAN ABULHAWA’S HUMILITY AND HOPE | SUSAN ABULHAWA’S CONTRABAND OF LOVE | THE PAPER BIRDS OF GAZA | THE MATHEMATICS OF IMPERIAL DEATH

SUSAN ABULHAWA’S HUMILITY AND HOPE

“I didn’t register the absence of greenery until I happened upon a red bougainvillea. Its flowers were dusty and alone in a deflowered world, but still alive.

The incongruity struck me, and I stopped the car to photograph it.

Now I look for greenery and flowers wherever I go — so far in the southern and middle areas (though the middle increasingly becomes more difficult to enter). But there are only small patches of grass here and there and an occasional tree waiting to be burned to bake bread

for a family subsisting on U.N. rations of canned beans, canned meat and canned cheese”

Excerpt from Susan Abulhawa’s essay published in the Electronic Intifada, March 6 2024..
Her whole essay can be read here :

https://electronicintifada.net/content/history-will-record-israel-committed-holocaust/45006

For Susan Abulhawa

we are grateful
you have returned safe to us
bearing the tales
your beloved friend
Refaat Alareer
died
telling

your humility
puts us in touch
with the humus
of Gaza

your hope
is the color
of one red flower
still alive
in a dusty dark world
deflowered
of
all it was before

you brought your people
overweight luggage
of food
to alleviate their starvation –
you bring back
overweight suitcases
of testimony
filled with your people’s voices
letting us know
there can be
no wall of silence
between their world
and us

(c) Julia Wright. March 8 2024. All Rights Reserved to playgroundsforpalestine.org

 

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SUSAN ABULHAWA’S CONTRABAND OF LOVE

Love is contraband in Hell
cause love is an acid
that eats away bars

Assata Shakur, 1987

Susan Abulhawa –
you let us know
that what you most enjoyed
in Gaza
was watching
the utter pleasure
of your starved
and parched
and emaciated hosts
drinking sip by sip
the real coffee
you had hidden in your luggage
and prepared daily
for them
with Love

now that you have returned
from beyond Hell,
we
in the belly of the genocidal beast
drink
sip by sip
the sobering beverage,
the non ersatz coffee of the Truth
you brought back with you
as contraband
through the customs of murderous media
and you let us drink
unsweetened
undiluted
muddy like your bleeding earth
full of the dregs of rubble
the burning scalding stream
of an unending scream
no longer
soundless

(c) Julia Wright. March 9th 2024. All Rights Reserved to playgroundsforpalestine.org

 

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THE PAPER BIRDS OF GAZA

in memory of Refaat Alareer

trailing
the strings
of Refaat Alareer’s tale
in a sky
of smoke,
the children of Gaza
believe in
their power
to fight off the bombs
with
the iridescence
of kites
that carry their dreams
of flying home
as paper birds

the IDF soldiers
fireball
the kites
trying to kill the dreams
as they seize
toys
left behind
and decorate
their tanks with the trophies
of the childhood
they shot down

orphaned of its child,
each stolen toy
owns
the spirit of his dream

and
each child’s dream
escapes and flies
higher than the bombs
higher
always
higher
out of reach

(c) Julia Wright. March 10, 2024. All Rights Reserved to playgroundsforpalestine.org

 

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THE MATHEMATICS OF IMPERIAL DEATH

almost four times
three hundred and sixty five days ago
George Floyd’s
life was blood choked
by the boot
of
Derek Chauvin
for nine minutes and twenty five seconds

today
Gaza
has been agonizing
blood choked
for one hundred and fifty eight days
of bombs made in USA
under the boots
of those
who taught the Chauvins
in our cop cities
proliferating
new techniques
of neat ropeless lynching

the mathematics of imperial death
intersect
and
radiate

(c) Julia Wright. March 12th 2024. All Rights Reserved.