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