March 12, 2024
What Is Ours to Bear
By Byron Hoot
I am not one to write about
the affairs of the world
believing who we are is what we see—
the change to be made in us,
in you and me not some abstraction
called society, not politics, not
nations. I am not blind nor deaf
to suffering, wars, aggression
or the fact the easy route of force
to meet force is the preferred
solution despite what is said.
Nor am I ignorant that we are
led by leaders who are not who
they are said to be. Consider history
and see the lives of one person
who changed everything—for good
or bad—and recall the power
of one: you, me, you, me ad infinitum
our hearts in one accord
enough to stop the absurdity
of the world. The question is—
“Why not?”
Byron Hoot was born and raised in Appalachia. Left, returned. Now lives in The Wilds of Pennsylvania. He is a nemophilist—drawn to forests, a haunter of the woods. Someone who regularly spends time in a particular place, in the tradition of Thoreau, Leopold, Berry, and others who see our humanness in our response to the land. How we treat the land as a reflection of how we treat ourselves and others. The responsibilities inherent from our first to last breath. The privilege of being alive. Byron writes of what he knows. And what he is suspicious of in hope of a “new heaven and earth” where we can be the brothers and sisters we are.
February 20, 2024
Nevermind
By Dawn Shields
Strong black body
Silent, black
Sigh…
Lent your body
Rent your body
Homeland
Home…
lands far away
Body on Body
Black on Black
Belly of boat
Strong black body
Black is beast
Be…still
Be…stripped
Be…steady
Be…starved
Be…
Chains to claims
Great price demands
Highest bidder
Bid her goodbye
Field hand
Bleeding hand
White hand
Babe in hand
New brand
Shhhh….
Empty hand
Emancipation
Anticipation
No realization
Paper signed
War ended
…“N” dead
Slavery ceases
Sea says ships
Not needed
Slave to prisoner
Fields to mines
Minus “mine”
No investment
Get replacement
Beat to death?
Nevermind
Worked to death?
Nevermind
Never
Mine
My body
My mind
My wife
My daughter
My land
My home
Never
Mine
Dawn Shields is a freelance writer who believes the written word is a powerful tool for implementing social change. Her focus is educating the public about Black history in the United States and how it perpetuates injustice today. She passionately reveals the disguised suppression and control that is mass incarceration. At the same time, she celebrates the strength, intelligence, beauty, and contribution of this great people.
February 1, 2024
Harlem
A tribute to Langston Hughes’ “Harlem”
By Maureen P. Medina
In white america where your dreams are deferred
We don’t care if you’re black, but it’s not preferred
Where they dry up I can’t breathe
Put your hands up I can’t breathe
Raisins in the sun but not too much sun
Racism kills our black sons
All moms were summoned
when he called for just one
They fester like sores
Protesters
Pro – testers
Test the crowd—make them go wild
Don’t run or they’ll shoot
tear gas, blind the masses
Anti-racist, anti-fascist
Hate stinks like rotten meat
Like the 13th amendment
A claim to end slavery
But always read the fine print
Mass incarceration
Black criminalization
And if you speak up—there goes the first amendment
Until they crust and sugar over
Like a syrupy sweet
He incites violence with nonsensical tweets
Justice for all, land of the free
Dominate, he says
Crush his neck with your knee
Inflammatory rhetoric
Sanctioned brutality
And hate sags with a heavy load
A weapon of mass destruction,
Systemic oppression in tow.
Your racism is showing
Amurrica’s ’bout to implode
When windows are broken, it’s all over the news
But bring on the lynching, Trump readied the noose
Arrest the cops that killed Bre
On a hunt for George Floyd
4 centuries captured in 8 minutes
Skin color—yeah, they weaponize it.
Silence is violence
So I’ll say this out loud:
No justice, no peace.
No justice, no peace.
No justice, no peace.
Maureen P. Medina, a Filipina American, is the author of My Fears Out Loud and a Pushcart Prize nominee. She leads writing workshops, such as a virtual workshop she hosts monthly for Speak the Word, with the goal of healing, strengthening the mind-body connection, and normalizing fear. Maureen advocates for human and nonhuman animals, asserts that all oppression is connected, and—in alignment with the idea that none of us are free unless all of us are free (Fannie Lou Hamer)—hopes to inspire the pursuit of collective liberation with her writing.
Editors’ Note: Maureen P. Medina read “Harlem” during the international virtual poetry event Poets Against Racism: In This Together 2023. See the event recording here.
January 9, 2024
4000 / by Nasser Rabah (1 December 2023)
Translated by Saleh Razzouk with PARH USA Member Philip Terman
Translator Philip Terman’s Commentary
With increases in both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia occurring worldwide due to the Israel-Hamas War, we must remember we all belong to humankind. Poetry can intensify that understanding.
In 2014, I received an email from Saleh Razzouk, a writer and translator who lives in Aleppo, Syria. He had seen a poem of mine online about Franz Kafka and asked whether he could translate it into Arabic. As a Jew from Cleveland, interested in the poetry of all cultures, I was honored and thrilled that an Arabic writer and translator was interested in my poetry at all, let alone drawn to translate it into a language so foreign (yet, curiously, so close) to my own Hebraic background. But there was hesitancy, too. Wasn’t Syria a stated “enemy” of not only Israel but also the US? And weren’t there fighting groups in Syria, such as ISIS, internationally recognized as “terrorists”? After some googling about Saleh, I was convinced that he was who he said he was. Our friendship began, and fruitful it has been. We have worked together on many translations of poets into English. Saleh translates the Arabic, and I assist with the English as well as attempt to find homes for the poems. It was through Saleh that I learned of poet Nasser Rabah, who lives in Gaza City. In 2018 we worked on a translation of Nasser’s poem “Heart with Windows, but No Doors,” which was subsequently published in Crazyhorse (now called swamp pink). That poem can be found here.
Fast forward to October 7, 2023. Naturally, the unspeakable atrocity perpetuated by Hamas in Israel that day was devastating. I have family there. Israel was central to my parents’ generation, the significance of which they attempted to pass on to their children. I’m not an orthodox Jew, but I’m not a once-a-year Jew either. I take my Judaism very seriously. My mother was a Hebrew teacher. The household I was raised in practiced conservative Jewish rituals—kosher, the holidays, Hebrew School until confirmation. And though I write many poems inspired by sources other than my heritage, I have come to embrace that I’m most often a “Jewish poet.” (My next book will be New and Selected Jewish Poems.) Significant to my embrace of Jewish culture is the centrality of its ethical dimension: “Thou shalt not kill.” “Thou shalt love the stranger as thyself.” “Do not do unto others as you would have them not do unto you.”
Nevertheless. Israel’s response has been relentless: over 22,000—more than 9,000 of them children—killed as of this writing. I’ve been a critic of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians since learning about what is called “the situation.” I read a poem at my confirmation from Hebrew School that went, in part, “Jerusalem calls, Jerusalem calls / listen, if you can tear down those walls.” Difficult as it has been to write about such a hugely—as they say, “complicated”—subject, I’ve since attempted several poems exploring my reaction to Israel’s oppressive policies, which I have witnessed firsthand on my trips there.
And so. Having worked on Nasser’s poem, I sought him out on Facebook. His wallpaper consists of a mural of 64 children’s faces. He was posting regularly, and I noticed that one post had to be a poem. I copied it and pasted it into Google Translate. It was called “4000,” and it blew me away. I sent it to Saleh. He translated it, and then I spent a little time with this or that word. After a hesitant fear of whether it was the “right” thing to do—that is, to try to contact a person living in a war zone—I messaged Nasser. I reminded him of our acquaintanceship. Shared with him that I found his poem powerful and hoped he didn’t mind that we had translated it. I didn’t expect a response. But a few days later, he did respond and said, in part, “Of course I remember you, Philip I will be glad if you can translate this poem in my last post in Facebook ‘4000’ and looking if any newspaper or magazine can publish this poem thank you my friend my regards.”
Nasser posted “4000” on December 1. Over a month later, the number of children killed has grown from approximately 4,000 to closer to 10,000. Every day I worry about Nasser. Who knows if I’ll ever hear from him again? I wrote to tell him that his poem would be published by Poets Against Racism & Hate USA and would appear on the organization’s website. I asked if I should change the title from “4000” to “10,000.”
I’m waiting to hear from him.
4000
Four thousand,
four thousand,
four thousand.
Not four, not forty, nor four hundred.
Four thousand soft hands touching right now the gate of Allah.
A chain of little angels covering the sky of this life.
Life looks old without children.
Four thousand lost kisses staggering in the air,
four thousand white butterflies without flowers to land on,
four thousand times the word “Mama” will not be said.
Four thousand times the word “Papa” will shatter the heart each morning and evening,
four thousand colorful shoes tucked under empty beds,
four thousand school bags guarding the sorrow of homes.
Four thousand morning sandwiches left on tables that no one will reach for.
Four thousand broken bicycles abandoned on the roads.
Four thousand will not enter the school door,
and will not attend graduation ceremonies,
will not buy Eid clothes,
yet will be with no friends.
Nobody can ask about their wishes when they grow up,
sitting forever next to a river of tears.
Four thousand photos on the walls,
in four thousand fathers’ pockets sipping grief.
Starving sparrows on four thousand mothers’ windows pecking the heart’s bread.
Four thousand scents that won’t leave their pillows,
four thousand books gathering the dust of longing,
four thousand eternal laughs breaking the glass of time.
They will not grow older, will not depart from the last scene,
will not flee the rubble,
will not find an ambulance,
will not make it to a hospital.
No mourners escorting them to funerals,
no flowers on their graves.
Only four thousand on the news.
Nasser Rabah was born in Gaza in 1963 and continues to live there. He got his BA in Agricultural Science in 1985, before going on to work as Director of the Communication Department in the Agriculture Ministry. He is a member of the Palestinian Writers and Authors Union and has published five collections of poetry—Running After Dead Gazelles (2003), One of Nobody (2010), Passersby with Invisible Clothes (2013), Water Thirsty for Water (2016), and Eulogy for the Robin (2020)—and a novel, Since approximately an hour (2018). Some of his poems have been translated into English and French.
Saleh Razzouk was born in the Aleppo province of Syria. He was educated at Aleppo University, Gliwice Polytechnic of Poland, and several universities across the UK. He is primarily a fiction writer with a strong interest in translation from and into Arabic. Among his translations is a study on the Arabic novel by Win-Chin Ouyang. Currently he is associate professor at The University of Aleppo, Faculty of Agriculture, Fiber Science section.
Philip Terman’s recent books of poetry include Our Portion (Autumn House Press, 2015), This Crazy Devotion (Broadstone Books, 2020), and, as co-translator, Tango Under a Narrow Ceiling: The Poems of Riad Saleh Hussein (Bitter Oleander Press, 2021). A selected Arabic translation of his work My Dear Friend Kafka, translated by Saleh Razzouk, was published by Ninwa Press in Damascus, Syria, in 2015. He is the recipient of the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award for Poetry on the Jewish Experience. Retired by Clarion University, he directs The Bridge Literary Arts Center in western Pennsylvania. An essay by Philip on his friendship with Saleh Razzouk appears in Poetry International, here. Philip encourages donations to help children suffering trauma during the ongoing conflict; such donations can be made to relevant emergency response programs at Unicef USA and Save the Children.