I type “Is Bisan” in the search bar
and the next two words appear automatically
with their furtive question mark, “still alive?”
Bisan, a Palestinian journalist popped into my Facebook feed
one morning during this latest Mideast roil,
her fresh, round face full of promise
her troubled brown eyes alert as she posted
cell phone videos of the wreckage of Palestine, the slaughter of the people.
The videos are raw, wound the eyes, sear the soul.
She posts each time she must flee, relocate,
so many displacements now she’s lost count.
One day she shows us her favorite flower
the passionate poppy, Hannoun, red, alive
pushing forth in the spring air,
another day she videos a small boy selling homemade potato chips.
“Delicious, tasty!” she says, almost smiling,
boys flying kites on the beach behind her.
These moments are her sustenance
as she shares pictures of her home in the Gaza ruins,
a video of the day a bomb at Al-Shifa hospital just missed her
by two minutes,
her refugee life in Rafah,
stories of others spit out by this war
hundreds of thousands with no safe place to go,
their way home stalled, like the peace talks.
Bisan is 27.
She is forthright, emotional, outraged,
bewildered.
She wonders, "Where is help? Why is this allowed to go on?"
Seven months now.
She looks into the phone’s lens. Begs, “Don’t get used to
what is happening in Gaza!”
She is searching for rationality, for assistance.
I will keep searching for her,
pray she can send more videos of children flying their kites,
sending up wishes,
pray that those wishes get answered.
Karen Warinsky is the author of three collections: Gold in Autumn (2020), Sunrise Ruby (2022 Human Error Publishing), and Dining with War (2023 Alien Buddha Press); a former finalist of the Montreal International Poetry Contest; a Best of the Net nominee; and runs Poets at Large.