WASHED

by Cally Conan-Davies

The full horror of the human tragedy unfolding on the shores of Europe was brought home on Wednesday as images of the lifeless body of a young boy – one of at least 12 Syrians who drowned attempting to reach the Greek island of Kos – encapsulated the extraordinary risks refugees are taking to reach the west. Turkish media identified the boy as three-year-old Aylan Kurdi and reported that his five-year-old brother had also met a similar death. Both had reportedly hailed from the northern Syrian town of Kobani, the site of fierce fighting between Islamic state insurgents and Kurdish forces earlier this year. —The Guardian, September 4, 2015

for Aylan

The bird, a murre, beaten by a wave,
its beak interred, its feathers caked with sand,
rolls in the foment of another wave.
No human word amounts to what has happened.
The bird is flowing back to the sky it gave.


Cally Conan-Davies is a writer who lives by the sea.

DEATH RETREATS

by Paul Smith

“Those who have been watching the clashes in Kobani and the coalition’s airstrikes minute by minute insist that the military balance has decidedly turned against IS. Particularly after IS withdrew from the Mishtanur hill that dominates Kobani from the east, and the People's Protection Units (YPG) advanced to control the road that IS used as its main supply line coming from Raqqa, it became apparent that the military balance was in favor of the defenders of Kobani.” --Cengiz Çandar, “Watching Kobani,” Al-Monitor, November 18, 2014. Image: A Kurdish man uses binoculars to watch fighting in Kobani, from the village of Mursitpinar, on October 6, 2014. (Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images)

Death is retreating
You can hear his footsteps
In the market
The rubble at Asayesh
In the hospital
Shrapnel
Flying out of a corpse
In the souk
Tents and rugs torn
Into shreds of fuzz
Death is on the run
His footprints craters
Fleeing across Tel Shair Hill


Paul Smith writes fiction and poetry.  He belongs to the Rockford Writers' Guild.  He likes to read about news from all over the world.

MURSITPINAR, NEAR SURUC, TURKEY

by Jude Cowan Montague

MURSITPINAR, TURKEY — Kurdish fighters have been able to halt the advance of the Islamic State extremist group in the Syrian border town of Kobani, where the U.S.-led coalition has been carrying out airstrikes for more than two weeks, activists said Sunday. In this Sunday, Oct. 12, 2014 file photo, a Turkish Kurd, standing in Mursitpinar, Turkey, on the Turkey-Syria border, watches smoke from fires caused by strikes during fighting between militants of the Islamic State group and Kurdish forces in Kobani, Syria. The predominantly Kurdish town of Kobani has been transformed from a dusty backwater into a symbol of resistance for Kurds around the world. The battle is now playing out in Kobani’s streets and alleyways - a fight being watched by scores of Syrian and Turkish Kurds, as well as dozens of journalists, through binoculars from hilltops and farms just across the border in Turkey. The international media spotlight, has helped turn the defense of Kobani into a very public test for the American-led international effort to roll back and ultimately destroy the Islamic State group. --Lefteris Pitarakis, AP, October 12, 2014

The tanks have left marks
where they crawled up the hill
to sit on the Kobani border.
No shadow.
Tank one wishes he was in the shade.
Tank two is trying to remember his name.
Tank three's mother is worried about him.
Tank four has lost his will to move.
They sit, smoke rising from the city in the valley.
Trees between the boxes are so tall and thin,
squeezing through, they point to the clouds.
White smoke like white hair
wafts up the concrete hillside.
What is happening in that house?
No one wants to go and see
this mysterious city.


Jude Cowan Montague is a writer, artist and composer who lives in London. She works as an archivist for Reuters Television. Her first collection of poetry, For the Messengers, was published by Donut Press in 2011. Her second, The Groodoyals of Terre Rouge, was published by Dark Windows Press in 2012. She makes musical improvisations on Reuters stories and these are available on the Parisian-based netlabel Three Legs Duck and other experimental works are available on the London-based netlabel Linear Obsessional.