by Janet Bowdan
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| Jac Zagoory Rocket Pen Holder |
I forgot what I was going to ask,
just a question that popped out of my head
the moment I went into the kitchen,
and Blair laughed saying I was entitled
to a day off and maybe so
but what if this is not the day
what if this is the day I can write about Israel
firing back on Gaza, the two women who died
running for shelter, the military targeting Hamas
tunnels but bringing down buildings, children
dying, maybe this is the day I can make them stop
killing each other if they can only stop—
the poem that lands on Netanyahu’s breakfast
so he has to read it, how his vow to make
Hamas pay “a very heavy price” is a weight
in his throat; he tries to swallow it down
with coffee. It is not Hamas who’s paying,
his orange juice says, his bagel with cream cheese.
We’re all paying. Make it stop, the poem
says before it backflips and speeds like a rocket
to the Hamas leaders: make it stop. And it lights up
the sky but harms no one.
Janet Bowdan's poems have appeared in APR, Best American Poetry, The Rewilding Anthology, River Heron Review, and elsewhere. Her chapbook Making Progress came out in 2019 from Finishing Line Press. She lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, with her husband and son (who recently had a zoom bar mitzvah), as well as a cat and a chinchilla.