
photo by Ali Hamad/APA
When the genocide began I started writing daily notes. The notes, many of them handwritten in various notebooks, were disconnected lines, images, stories I’d read or heard. Some of them evolved into poems, included in this collection; but it wasn’t until Day 167 that — having heard about a mother who was able to save one of her children but not the others, and a doctor who was saving the amputated limbs of wounded children, putting the limbs into boxes labeled with their names — I felt the urgency to document these tragedies in a whole poem every day, and that is what I will do until the genocide ends.
I intend to keep writing until the ceasefire is permanent — until Palestine is free.
Day 640
Where has the time gone,
your sister asks you. It’s late.
You’re lying side by side
in the tent. The night wind
blows sand against the canvas flaps.
Your small brothers sleep restlessly,
crying out now and then. In hunger?
Fear? The summer night is warm.
The air the tent still holds
clings to your body, even soothing.
Where has it gone? she asks again.
We were young and now it feels
our youth has been drained from us.
We laughed. We danced. Now our days
are spent looking for water. Rationing
food. You hear her beneath the sound
of explosions not far away. You want
to answer her but you can’t
find the words. Sleep overcomes
you. A shroud. Almost comforting.
Day 639
There’s no formula
to feed her baby
in all of Gaza, and starvation
has dried her breasts. She holds him
in her arms, waits
for the liquid from a can of lentils
to boil on the fire she’s made
from sticks and paper. She knows
he needs more, and she knows
this is all she can give him.
Everyone in the neighboring tents
is saving the liquid for her
from their cans: cans of beans,
more lentils, expired cans of anything
they can get. She boils
the liquid. All her son
has known of this world
is hunger and explosions.
At least, she thinks, she can feed him
something. At least, for an hour
or two, he might sleep, his body
aching a little less.
Day 638
The surgeon is standing
beside a child’s bed.
The child is eight. She’s
been shot in the head
by a soldier. Close range.
At a food distribution hub,
her father witnessing.
The doctor studies the image
he holds in his hands: there
is the bullet, lodged
in the child’s cerebellum.
Even if he can remove it,
will she ever be able to walk?
Breathe on her own? The surgeon
weighs the odds, knows
if he doesn’t remove the bullet
the child will die. He sets down
the image of her brain, which,
until the bullet, he would have said
was perfect. He cleans his hands
as well as possible, calls
for his nurses. Takes up
his tarnished instruments of hope.
Day 637
Here is the place
where we played ball.
Here was a field, a street.
Here there were houses; there
you can see the remains of a school.
Here was the time
when we walked out the door
and found our friends waiting.
Here were the bright afternoons,
hot in summer, crisp in autumn,
when we learned to kick hard,
to run fast, punt
with our heads. Here we shouted
to each other when someone
scored, here we taught one another
how to play better.
Here we were happy.
So we take this ball, kick it
into the fetid air, the smoke, the dust.
Someone kicks it back, beyond us:
those piles of rubble
to the left, the right,
can be our goals. We will play
despite everything. When,
why, would we ever stop
playing?
Day 636
He’s ten. He’s sitting
on the ground, holding
his younger brother
in his lap. Next to them,
lying down, is their sister, clearly
wounded, crying. He is so tender
with them, you’d think
he was already grown. The girl
is crying for their mother. He
is stroking her hair as a mother
might, or a father. He’s
ten. He should be running
down the street with friends,
kicking a ball, shouting.
He should be sprinting
into the sea, diving
under a wave, coming up
smiling. Instead
he is telling his sister
and brother, Mommy
will come back soon. She’s
coming… Instead
he’s looking up at the sky,
looking east to where
there’s a pillar of smoke.
More frightened
than he will admit
to them. Wondering if what
he’s telling them
is the truth.
Day 635
This child is walking away
from his tent. His brothers and mother
are in the tent, sleeping.
He’s twelve. He’s wanting to walk
to where they’re distributing food,
though he knows the danger. That’s
why he’s walking away now,
at two in the morning, because he knows
they’d all keep him from going.
He wants to bring something for them
that will keep them alive
a few more days. He wants
to feed them. He’s
the first son, his father
martyred a year ago.
He’s walking under the stars now:
thin hook of a moon, the summer night
mild, dark air enveloping him.
Quiet. No drones, no planes,
no shots being fired. Two in the morning.
He walks, walks more quickly, knows
what he’s risking, knows how fast
and agile he is, thinks he could dive
behind a rock. Imagines now
what he’ll do when the soldiers
start firing. How he’ll push
through the crowd, how he’ll carry back
the little box of food. Imagines
the squeals of his brothers
when they open the box. The look
of amazement mixed with concern
on his mother’s face.
Day 634
for Ahmed D.
Your streets are nothing
but dust and echoes.
A belt of fire
circles the tents.
You write, flames
raging around you.
What else to do? Nowhere
you can go, nowhere
to escape this. In her womb,
your wife carries your child.
The first died under the rubble.
Now this one grows, protected —
if anything can be protected —
from mercilessness, brutality.
You tell me the simple foods
you want to eat: Chicken.
Bread. Rice. How could it seem
so impossible to dream
of eating such simple foods?
In a tree stripped of summer leaves
by the bombings, one bird
is singing. He sits
on a naked branch,
his small throat pulsing
with song. See, we resist!
he reports to the sky, clear
for a moment of smoke
and flames.
Day 633
You can see every one of her ribs.
You can see where they spread open
like wings, where they make
a kind of bowl for the soft tissue
of her belly. You can see
how there is nothing
beneath her taut skin but bone.
You can see how little she had
to lose. Was she an infant?
Months old? A year?
Difficult to know.
You can imagine her body
as a cage: her organs
small fluttering birds
trapped inside. Now
she has wasted away.
Wasted away in the heat
of summer. Wasted away
without clothing. Wasted
away for want of milk.
Her wasted growing. Her wasted
looking. Listening. Who
would make an instrument
now of her bones? A harp?
A fiddle? Who will play
what ought to have been
the song of her soul?
Day 632
You’re walking to the aid hub
at two in the morning. Others
walk with you. Someone is using
the flashlight from his phone
to guide you. You’re walking.
Running. Then walking again.
Then hiding. You pass a body.
Another body. Six bodies
bleeding out on the ground.
The man with the flashlight
bleeds out on the ground. His phone
still radiating light. You keep running
now, you don’t even pick up
the phone. The ground is red. Soaked.
Injured people are walking
behind you. Staggering. Slow.
You want to help them but soldiers
are firing now. More people bleeding
from head wounds and chest wounds.
Are you anywhere close to the place
where you might get a small box of food
for your children? A few ounces of bulghur?
A can of beans?
Day 631
from a photograph
Outside the hospital, a man and a woman
are tenderly holding the body
of an infant who died
from malnutrition. Had they been
taking her to the hospital
for treatment — walked there
from wherever they’d been —
and arrived too late? The infant
is wrapped in a white
shroud, maybe a sheet or a pillow case.
You can see, in the photograph,
the top of her head: perfectly
formed, a few strands of hair.
She is weeks old at most.
The man and the woman —
are they her parents? Grandparents?
The man has some gray in his hair.
The woman’s face is weary. Weary
from grief? Starvation? Twenty months
of brutality, and, before that, years?
They hold the infant with such
tenderness, their love
and their mourning are in their fingers.
Both are weeping. The infant’s life
is dissolving now into poisoned air,
into toxic water. Dissolving
as they walked, ran, carrying her.
Now she belongs to the earth.
Now she is only a name
and a memory. Their hands
learning her by heart, so as
not to forget.