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| Many tributes to Hamza al-Khateeb, such as this one drawn by a child, were posted to a Facebook group to commemorate his life and death. Source: Aljazeera. |
He kept homing pigeons.
From my father's roof I rise, circling
the loss I cannot gather with these permeable wings
The bridge from pigeon to dove,
the broken body of a child.
From obedience to unruly honor,
the broken body of a child.
From this day forward the words
I carry will be mine alone,
home or elsewhere.
Words lifted into fury,
legs folded and burned but
still unbanded.
Peleg Held is a writer and a carpenter living with his partner and their brigand children in the southeast United States. He is a former member of Voices in the Wilderness, a campaign to lift the economic sanctions on Iraq and other failed attempts at decency.
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