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Crouching amid a pile of rubble that used to be his Gaza home, Mahmoud Hammad scoops dirt into a large sieve and shakes it, looking carefully before dumping it out. In recent days, tiny bones have appeared. Mr Hammad believes they belong to the unborn girl his pregnant wife was carrying when an Israeli air strike hit the family's building more than two years ago, killing his wife and their five children. —ABC (Australia) News, February 12, 2026 Israel used weapons in Gaza that made thousands of Palestinians evaporate. Al Jazeera investigation reveals how US-supplied thermal and thermobaric munitions burning at 3,500C have left no trace of nearly 3,000 Palestinians. Al Jazeera, February 10, 2026 On February 13, Russian troops attacked a hospital in Sumy where children are being treated. Two strikes were carried out on the medical facility with attack drones at intervals of about half an hour. —Top News in Ukraine, February 13, 2026 |
Putin is targeting Ukrainian children now; we must not look away.
With a flour sifter, a father in Gaza searches for his incinerated family
while Putin’s precision drones obliterate schools, hospitals, daycares.
Using shovels, people helped the father locate the rubble of his home.
With a flour sifter, a father in Gaza searches for his incinerated family.
Praise be to God, he says, pointing to the pile of bone fragments.
Using shovels, people helped him locate the rubble of his home.
In Gaza, the living are surrounded by the dead.
Praise be to God, Hammad says, pointing to a pile of bone fragments.
Israel returned decomposed bodies showing severe mutilation, abuse.
In Gaza, the living are surrounded by the dead.
Israel has restricted the use of bulldozers to excavate the corpses.
Israel returned decomposed bodies showing severe mutilation, abuse.
Hammad keeps a photo of his family, smiling, when they were alive.
Israel has restricted the use of bulldozers to excavate the corpses.
Body parts returned in boxes contain only skulls and some bones.
Hammad has a photo of his family, smiling, when they were still alive,
while Putin’s precision drones obliterate schools, hospitals, daycares.
Body parts returned in 66 boxes contained only skulls and a few bones,
but Putin is targeting Ukrainian children now; we must not look away.
Bonnie Naradzay has been leading weekly poetry sessions for homeless people at Street Sense and at Miriam’s Kitchen and also at a retirement community, all in Washington, DC. While at Harvard University in the late 1960s, she was in Robert Lowell’s class on “The King James Bible as English Literature.” In 2010 she was awarded the University of New Orleans Poetry Prize–-a month’s stay in Northern Italy–-in the South Tyrol castle of Ezra Pound’s daughter Mary. A 2017 graduate of the St John’s College (Annapolis) Graduate Institute, her book of poems Invited to the Feast was published by Slant Books in October 2025; three of the poems were nominated for Pushcart Prizes.