WEDDING IN ISRAEL

by Jacqueline Coleman-Fried

The green cotton nightgown—clean, 

stuffed next to sweaty 

T-shirts—is going home.

I hope not to hear again

the phone alert go off

in my gut, a morbid tuning fork.

I thank the cousins—sojourners 

with me to this fête—who,

bent over phones, found 

the fixer, the vans, the flights.

Thank the lover back home—pounding

head, twisted stomach—who pleaded,

Keep going.  

On the road to Amman, another siren.

We enter a concrete capsule

by a gas station.

Close the door.

 

 

Author’s note: Recently I traveled to Israel for a family wedding. Just hours after the last dance, Israel and Iran began attacking each other. Israel’s airport closed, trapping me, and the whole country, under barrages of missiles and drones. On the road to Jordan, and a flight out, I endured one final air raid siren and shelter. Even escaping, there was no escape.

Jacqueline Coleman-Fried is a poet living in Tuckahoe, NY. Her work has appeared in The New Verse News, Sheila-Na-Gig, Nixes Mate, and Streetlight Magazine.

OTHER SIDE GHAZAL

by Judith Terzi




The quinceañera, the college graduation. You won't be here.
For your parents' fiftieth. Sorry, you won't be traveling here.

Deported for one ounce of grass. You rode the big bus twice.
You wander dreamless south of the border. You won't be here.

Your mother––sin papeles. Twenty years of tucking corners.
Ten more nurturing others' kids. She can't go there, she's here.

Your father––paperless––mower of grass, nurturer of crops.
Builder of bookcases, family, walls. Thirty years of here.

No re-entry to the USA. No entry. Stay in Aleppo, Mosul.
Trek to Gaza City, Jordan, Istanbul. No welcome mat here.

Endure the tarp of tents, bitterness in your husband's glance.
Let dust on your wife's hijab thicken. You can't come here.

Another quiet cycle through your prayer beads––misbaha.
Kiss weariness from your children's smiles. Not allowed here.

We're sorry our gods have seized the heart of this matter.
They say our country may be great again. You won't be here.

Judith Terzi's poetry has appeared in a wide variety of journals and anthologies including Caesura, Malala: Poems for Malala Yousafzai, Raintown Review, Spillway, Unsplendid, and Wide Awake: The Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond. If You Spot Your Brother Floating By is her most recent chapbook from Kattywompus Press. Her poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and Web.

BEAUTIFUL AND BITTER THE WATER

by Matthew Johnson

Before God had gone down to trouble those waters,
I had dipped and wash you child in the calm waves
Of the Nile.

From rooted Jordan and Babylon child,
I sang to you those ancient songs
As I scrubbed away the dirt from your black flesh.

In the plantation cots in the golden dusk of Georgia,
In steadfast resolute,
I tried to cleanse the expanse of your black skin with water.

But now child, I’ve been unsettled.
Muddy as the blackened conscious of Delta Blues,
I’ve seen the waters turn a syrupy-hue.

I now allow you child to drink bitterness
And etch the poison of human guile
In your god-like blood and god-like skin.

Let us flow to a return child,
When I sang those old spirituals, lulling you to sleep
With the most savory of shadows and dreams.

But in those days oh child,
The waters were far too deep
And your skin was far too beautiful to leave.


Matthew Johnson is a 2015 December graduate of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Matthew is a sports journalist who has written for the USA Today College, Fansided, StoopSports and his university newspaper, The Carolinian. Matthew’s poetry has appeared in The Coraddi and The Carolinian. He lives in North Carolina.