Thursday, May 02, 2024

ALMA MATER

by Catherine Gonick


Pro-Palestinian protesters gather in front of Sproul Hall during a planned protest at UC Berkeley in Berkeley, Calif., on Monday, April 22, 2024. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)


A goddess of silence carries
my severed right arm
 
my Zionist  
arm they call 
 
genocidal among
many other names.

Silently moving
out of sight

through camps
where the righteous

sing from tents 
it waves goodbye.
   
I hear
the blood of words dry

feel the pain
of my phantom limb. 


Catherine Gonick's alma mater is U.C. Berkeley. She has published poetry in journals including Live Encounters, Notre Dame Review, Forge, and Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and in anthologies including Support Ukraine, Grabbed, and Rumors, Secrets & Lies: Poems About Pregnancy, Abortion and Choice. She works in a company that slows the rate of global warming through projects that repair and restore the climate.