ANGELS OF DEATH

a previously unpublished poem written in 1982

by Mitchel Cohen

Veterans warn of echoes from 1982 Lebanon war as new conflict looms on Israel’s northern borders —The Observer, July 14, 2024

Israel, baby, you're doing it again!
How many times have I told you
You can't use me as your trench coat
Flashing your Mezuzah in the subways?!
Look, there are three things in this life
that carry us through in one piece
and one of them is Love!
This isn't love, it's murder.

Israel, sweetheart, listen to me.
Take your planes and go home.
Take your tanks and turn the guns around.
You point them at the wrong people.
Your enemies are at home.
They are in bed, living fat
Off their profits, traif pigs
in plush corporate boardrooms

Israel, the desert
is rising up around you. Refugees
are thrashing the sands with thatched straws
peeled from the rubble of huts
and phosphorous bombs. It rises up
from the desert floor of Galilee, from the West Bank,
and over Beirut, little separate clouds of sand,
Smoky clouds, bloody clouds
Of Palestine's Indians.

Israel, even in America,
in the apartments of Jews
along Ocean Parkway, in Co-op City,
In Miami, and Cleveland,
and St. Louis, a panic
jangles in the teeth, a shudder
shivers through the shawls
worn on Shabboth, an unspoken nightmare
kicks open the jaws, a tear
a scream. No, Israel, no!
We will not be your gestapo!
We cannot shield you from the genocide you commit.
  Israel, O Israel,
  Get the hell out of Lebanon now!

Mitchel Cohen was a founder of the infamous Red Balloon Poetry Conspiracy and Red Balloon Collective at SUNY Stony Brook (1969 and on). He co-founded the No Spray Coalition against pesticides, chaired the WBAI radio Local Board (2008-12), co-edited G, the newspaper of the NY State Greens/Green Party as well as the national Green Politix, and hosted a weekly internet radio show, Steal This Radio. He has published two books of poems—The Permanent Carnival and One-Eyed Cat Takes Flight—with a third in the works. He has also authored radical pamphlets and books including The Fight Against Mosanto's Roundup: The Politics of Pesticides (Skyhorse). Mitchel's currently mourning the death of Willie Mays—the greatest baseball player of all time—and his dear friend and poet Connie Norgren. Mitchel lives in “The People's Republic of Brooklyn.”

SEED CORN MUST NOT BE GROUND

by Pamela Wynn

Seed Corn Must Not Be Ground: A mother protecting her children, lithograph by Käthe Kollwitz, 1942. Image source: Spartacus Educational

Haunting the halls of the museum
paintings protest a war the young know little of.

My nephew, eighteen, reports for duty today.
Army recruiters assured him, his vision is 20-20.

My sister pours cereal as if today were like any other.

The youngest spills milk. She scolds the child
harshly, as if spilling milk were the end of the world.

Once I stood atop Masada. There
Israeli soldiers swear allegiance.

There ancestors killed themselves and each other.
They would not suffer at the hands of another.

In nearby Be’er Sheva, sirens pierce lives of children
—bomb shelters minutes away.

In neighboring Palestine children have no time at all.

We are marching toward the end of the world.
Barely a pause to bury broken young bodies in the ground.

Who can forgive us? We know what we do.

Pamela Wynn is author of Diamonds on the Back of a Snake (Laurel Poetry Collective, 2004) and co-editor of the anthology of poems Body of Evidence (Laurel Poetry Collective, 2012). She has published widely in journals and anthologies such as The Religious Imagination of American Women (Mary Farrell Bednarowski, Indiana University Press, 1999), Arts: The Arts in Religious and Theological Studies, Bryant Literary Review, Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality, Water~Stone Literary Journal, Blue Collar Review, Christian Century, and Sojourners Magazine. She has received support for her work from the Dayton Hudson, Jerome and General Mills Foundations, Minnesota State Arts Board, Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, New York Mills Arts & Cultural Center, and Walker Art Center.