THE PROMISE OF SMALL BLESSINGS
here
I am promised
the proximity of city squirrels
the ones missed
in Europe
and i am told
they own my street
here
i am promised
the sight of chickadees
and the nearness
of owls
here
i am told
a coyote
the other day
would have sauntered down
the block
if the birds had let it
here
the blossoms
of trees yet to be named
light up my stained-glass door
here
dimming my window
no electric shutters
but the criss-crossing
of vine
here
i have joined eastern time
and I am closer to ground zero
right across the lake
here for all i know
i will be brushed by the spirits
of the underground railroad
here
for a time of grace
after forced roaming
i strike the roots
of yet another habitat –
a new base
(c) Julia Wright May 6, 2026. All Rights Reserved.
IS THERE BREAKING HISTORY AS THERE IS BREAKING NEWS?
to all the People’s historians and may we be the historians of our own struggles
Is there breaking History
as there is breaking news –
or is History
a dough we knead
daily
with our hands
with our sinews?
is History
a sudden brilliant sleight of hand
or the humdrum maintenance
of each battle won?
how is History sung –
in opera halls in white houses
or in the streets
in workplaces
and the fields?
how is History commemorated –
by those who would steal it
to pour polluted water in its wine
or by the People
who birthed it
with their labor of Love
and unstinting
longhaul time?
(c) Julia Wright May 9, 2026, All Rights Reserved.
AN AMBER ALERT FOR TIME
where did time go?
i wish i had left a trail
of crumbs
to let me know
where did time go?
is it in the dust
that slowly floats
when i pull down
from its high pile
a book too long unread?
where did time go?
does it hide beneath
the last curled winter leaf
pushed by Spring’s wind?
does it wait
for a baby sparrow
to learn to negotiate
an electric wire?
where did time go?
if only i could abolish
the glass of the hour
and take back
its sand –
the beach where each child
looks out to sea
and still innocently sings
where did time go?
should i have crumbled
more of it
into a longer trail of poems
for others
my brothers
to pick their way
through rubble’s mire
to return Home?
(c) Julia Wright May 10, 2026. All Rights Reserved.
BEN GVIR’S JUST DESSERTS
from the Congo to Israel to Epstein’s class, cannibalism – as Jonathan Swift , Refaat Alareer and Richard Wright said in their “Modest Proposals” – is a diseased symptom of the imperial mindset.
one finds
in uncomfortably recent years
in Brussels
the capital of former
Congo-Leopoldville
pastry and candy shops
still selling
dark chocolate severed arms
a delicacy
to be consumed and savored
did not Ben Gvir
the other day
visit a crocodile farm
and muse nostalgically
that he wished he
had a swamp of alligators
to encircle a purpose-made Israeli Alcatraz
where he could watch thrown Palestinians
cause a feeding-frenzy?
and today,
wishing to please,
Ben Gvir’s wife,
has offered
literally the icing
on his birthday cake:
a delicious
yummy
choke watering
noose
tell me,
Ben Gvir,
what does
a powdered sugar
and cornstarch
noose taste like?
a noose
flavored with stolen oranges
from scorched Palestinian groves?
a noose
stirred
with hatred and bitter bile?
a noose
more economical
than a farmed crocodile?
but Refaat Alareer
had the last word
when he suggested
with that gentle smile of his
that all along
the craven need of Israel
was to devour Palestinians
whose culture
and food
and Sumood
and Love of Land
zionist hunger
can never replicate
or in spite of recipes and contraband
even begin to equate
let alone ever begin to understand
(c) Julia Wright May 11, 2026. All Rights Reserved to what remains of the family of the poet and educator Refaat Alareer murdered by the IOF, to the Global Sumud Flotilla and to Susan Abulhawa’s playgroundsforpalestine.org
