LIKUD LEGITIMIZATION

by Felicia Nimue Ackerman

with apologies to Emily Dickinson

An Israeli military investigation that has roiled the country with allegations of sexual abuse by its own ranks was set in motion by doctors who reported injuries to a Palestinian detainee that were so severe they required surgery, medical staffers familiar with the matter said… In a heated exchange in Israel’s parliament last week, one lawmaker asked another, “To insert a stick in a person’s rectum, is that legitimate?” “Yes,” replied Hanoch Milwidsky, a member of Likud. “If he is a Nukhba [member of Hamas’s elite fighting unit, which was involved in the Oct. 7 attacks] everything is legitimate to do to him. Everything.” —The Wall Street Journal, August  6, 2024

We'll maim our captured foes and show
No mercy or respect.
We'll soon be lords of all the land
With all rebellion wrecked.

We know we'll be condemned and yet
We forge ahead like kings
Triumphantly. What liberty
Unfettered vengeance brings!

Felicia Nimue Ackerman is a professor of philosophy at Brown University and has had over 300 poems in places including American Atheist, The American Scholar, Better Than Starbucks, The Boston Globe, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Down in the Dirt, The Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin, Free Inquiry, The Galway Review, Light Poetry Magazine, Lighten Up Online, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Options (Rhode Island's LGBTQ+ magazine), The Providence Journal, Scientific American, Sparks of Calliope, Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and Your Daily Poem. She has also had eight previous poems in The New Verse News.

IT HAD BEEN WINTER

by Roger Aplon

She came to him followed 

by her mother & her three daughters. He waited

sipping strong black coffee 

& reading the interview with Dayan’s wife &

how the country’s moral 

fabric was being shredded, how power soils men.

It had been winter, they’d

made a pact, to plant in the spring, invite neighbors, 

the way it had been then,

as their grandfather’s dreams had been written down, how

the land would bear fruit for those 

who dig the wells, bend to furrow & set the seed.

In his dream, his kids play hard 

ball in Gaza when Rachides’ play in Tel Aviv.

In his dream, the Likud

who strut like crowned-kings in Jerusalem, ignore 

their spite, open the cells, call

off the dogs – demolish these blood corrupting walls.

Roger Aplon was a founder & editor of Chicago’s CHOICE Magazine with John Logan and Aaron Siskind. He has published one collection of short stories (Intimacies) & nine collections of poetry, most recently, The Man With His Back To The Room (2007) & It’s Only TV (2013). He occasionally reads his work with musicians from Wormhole & Trummerflora Collective in Yokohama, Japan & the US: San Diego & New York City. He was recently awarded an arts fellowship from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, New Mexico.