Arts & Culture / Convergence / Politics / Vol 3. No. 1

this mourning

Shelia Anonzier, spring

Image Credit: Shelia Anonzier, spring, (2018), 7 x 9.5, watercolor on paper. Courtesy of the artist.

 

star of Bethlehem open in profusion with the new moon a ground cover

of small celestial flowers on this day when the faithful break their month-long fast

 

at long last the bones of our children have been returned to family and earth…

 

how could it be? almost forty years ago on this day the settler colonial state

of us bombed a neighborhood block in West Philly and cordoned off the houses

while whole families burned to death

in their homes…

 

fourteen year old Tree Africa

who loved to run and to climb

and pray her wings

and twelve year old Delisha

who was “always right behind

her big sister…”

 

on this day in the sunset moon rise of the Eid celebration the settler colonial state began again and again its aerial bombing this time of a neighborhood block in Gaza apartment buildings collapse on the families living in them and when Rian Baba! Baba! and his daughter Sarah were pulled from the rubble bloody and broken but alive

all their loved ones lay dead and buried around them

and the voice of his youngest

crawling through the flames

calling Baba! Baba!

echoes

in the silence

 

star of bethlehem… explosions rend the moon.. a child crawls runs climbs through the inferno in my dreams I throw my body over hers cradle her to my chest heart lungs

stamp out the flames in arms gather our kin gather our kin gather

our kin…

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