by Roxanne Doty
These are the poets and writers who have been killed in Gaza. —Literary Hub, December 21, 2023
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Before they were bombed from the sky warheads raining on their crucified city littered with the bones of winter and blood of children they were a poet and a teacher a mother and father who understood the hope of words, the way they slipped through walls and checkpoints couldn’t be stopped by soldiers or guns, how they empowered defied the laws of physics and occupation and oppression To the secretaries of war who murdered the poet words were sterile instruments, tools like wrenches and screwdrivers, hammers from the hardware store, like bunker buster bombs and hellfire missiles from a rich country with democracy and security on its lips and complicity on its hands, to these priests of destruction, the poet was a calculation the result of collateral damage equations estimates of death rankings of acceptable levels of slaughter The poet was killed in their home and in a school and a hospital and a UN shelter and a refugee camp and on a war-torn street and waving a white flag before they died the poet had asked When shall this pass? The poet understood that words are fragile even with their power could crumble and die they need an audience to listen to absorb to act and the poet knew that all the children of Gaza are poets too
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Roxanne Doty lives in Tempe, Arizona. Her debut novel Out Stealing Water was published by Regal House Press, August 30. 2022. Her first poetry collection will be published by Kelsay Books in the spring of 2024. Her short story “Turbulence” (Ocotillo Review) was nominated for the 2019 Pushcart prize for short fiction. Other stories and poems have appeared in Third Wednesday, Quibble Lit, Superstition Review, Forge, I70 Review, Soundings Review, Four Chambers Literary Magazine, Lascaux Review, Lunaris Review, Journal of Microliterature, The New Verse News, Saranac Review,Gateway Review and Reunion-The Dallas Review.
The true marriage of poetic voice and social content. Informative and inspiring poem.
Powerful, passionate, prophetic! Thanks for sharing.