The World Narrowed

The World Narrowed

The world narrowed to a single point.
The war, the wars, a single point.
The Iraq Palestine Gaza sexism occupation
all that blurred to nothing.
“My back is broken.” The last words Rachel Corrie ever said.
I dropped my phone
took her head in my hands to stabilize her spine.
Nearby the bulldozers and tanks were driving.
The land scraped clean of homes,
a steel wall instead.
The world, my world, narrowed to just four people.
I held Rachel’s head.
On her right and left Greg and Will knelt beside her,
three friends told her we loved her
how awesome she was
she was going to be ok.
I observed the thin skin around her eyes and ears blackening with blood
from the bleeding in her brain.
at that moment there were just four of us in the world,
and one was dying as we held her.
This is the detail in every statistic.
A world narrowed in.
People holding their loved ones
their soft flesh
the hard metals of war

From the words of my friend Alice Coy

Damascus Gate

Damascus Gate

I didn’t hear it in Jerusalem
at Damascus Gate
three bodies dropped a mile away
while we sat and ate

Falafel sandwiches in the heat,
before we walked to a house,
to see folk spat at
as the sun sank down.

Ramadan waited and soldiers fell in
mouths dripping
on the smooth yellow rock.
and as we walked Kate said

I’ll take the big one,
you take the little two.
And we stared at the whites of their eyes
and teeth. The brown of their shirts

and grey of their guns.
There are black mosques, green crescents,
Red kuffiyehs sprayed on every wall.
Red stands for liberation

for a brand new nation
filled with pilgrims and settlers.
And we passed through them: the soldiers
like ghosts, our tongues trapped,

our eyes holding on to souvenirs
pictures of the pope and jesus, T-shirts
that say “God Bless Israel.”
And around us just a market, flat breads

and pancakes stacked for sundown;
the excitement and hunger shaking
the thirst of the small dry places
through the old town.

The soldiers poured their bottles out
like rivers
And a small brown boy, taller than the wall,
threw a stone.

( Henry Bell ) 

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To Mohammed

To Mohammed

They arrested your brother today,
your youngest brother.
I remember you telling me
how the doctors come and the interrogators come
and they are all the same people
making sure not to break your body, but to bend it just enough.
You snapped a fag and poured the tobacco out on the table,
as you said it. Just three of us in the Calton Bar after Hogmanay.
We’d walked up the Gallowgate and I was cold
and struggling through a hangover. How to write
when I think of you in a cell since easter,
or drinking Buckfast in Palestine, laughing at my haircut.
You said everyone must resist in their own way
‘We cannot all be artists, we cannot all be fighters,
but the man that sweeps the street, he is resisting too.’
And the man who sits in prison.

 ( Henry Bell )

 Henry Bell is a writer and editor living in Glasgow. His work has been published and produced in various places including Gutter Magazine, and at the Oran Mor. He is the editor of two anthologies: Tip Tap Flat, and A Bird is Not a Stone - an Anthology of Contemporary Palestinian Poetry. Twitter: @henbell

Maysam

MAYSAM

Ten-year-old Maysam from Gaza speaks
in English on YouTube, says, I’m still
alive and I’m not
terrorist. She smiles,
recites her lines in a sing-song manner
as if rehearsing for a school play
with the word kill in it,
shakes her head on the word not,
waves on hello! and bye!
as if waving to her mother
who is watching in the audience,
as if she could persuade
young Israeli women who tweet
stinking Arabs may you
die amen.
 ( Zeina Hashem Beck )



Zeina Hashem Beck is a Lebanese poet whose poetry collection, titled To Live in Autumn (Backwaters Press, 2014), won the 2013 Backwaters Prize. Follow her on Twitter: @zeinabeck or on Facebook.

Inside out

INSIDE OUT


For Gaza, July 2014

people inside out
on the streets in their loved ones’
arms people screaming
in football stadiums
my friend’s mom in Gaza is cheering
for Brazil and Holland
all that orange
burning almost
a sunrise all that
smoke
there’s an old woman
who dies holding
her spoon waiting
for iftar
which comes but so do
the rockets
and the news
Brazil loses to Germany 7-1
ABC News confuses Israel and Palestine
the whole dichotomy
occupied/
occupier inside
out
out
Holland loses
a girl not yet
one
wrapped in a flag
flags wrapped
around cars necks shoulders heads
in Gaza God
is the eyes
of a little doll kicked
among the rubble
eyes follow a ball
kicked in mid-air
a roof collapses
houses inside out
one bride postpones
her wedding
the game goes into
extra time
shelters there are no shelters
shield yourself with
your hands your voice
i haven’t slept since
yesterday writes Anas go ahead
and bombard july 13th
he dies the next day
a player kisses a trophy
his wife his son
a mother
kisses a dead child
grief inside out
is resistance
the crowds wave
at the victorious team
a whole family stands
on the roof waving
at the enemy’s planes

 ( Zeina Hashem Beck )

 

 

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