by Adrienne Pilon
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Source: American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee at Instagram |
If I write we are going to the sea if I write
shall be free if I write Palestine if I write
protest or encampment or salaam
my brother if I write Allah if I write
genocide if I write bombing or Gaza
or Hamas if I write Zionist if I write
apartheid or war crimes if I write
nearly 50,000 dead or children are dying
or ceasefire now these words may
rise up from the text, flagged and marked
by a force that gives no quarter
to what it does not care to understand.
The ink of my pen draws a target
on my back on the back of my mother
my father my wife my husband
my daughter my son my sister
my brother salaam my brother
salaam salaam salaam salaam
Adrienne Pilon is a writer, educator, and activist. Recent and forthcoming work appears in The Tiger Moth Review; Room; Tendon Magazine and elsewhere.
