SWIM THROUGH THE VEIL

by H. G.

UN Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory calls on the Israeli Government to urgently protect Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya and ensure his safety, dignity, and physical integrity. The Israeli Government must immediately release Dr. Abu Safiya, or promptly charge him with a recognizable criminal offence and grant him a fair trial. In the meantime, he must be urgently transferred to a civilian hospital to ensure that he receives life-saving medical care. Dr. Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, has been held in Israeli custody since December 2024 under Israel’s Unlawful Combatant Law, without charge or trial. He was arrested at the hospital after refusing to evacuate while treating critical patients. According to his lawyers, Dr. Abu Safiya appears to be at imminent risk of death. Information available to UN Human Rights--OPT indicates he has been subjected to torture and other ill-treatment, including prolonged solitary confinement, repeated severe assaults resulting in grave injuries, and denial of medical care. —United Nations, July 9, 2026

Reoccurring
nightmares of my childhood
suddenly surprise my adult dreamscape

I'm drowning again
too deep underwater
sometimes
my ankle tied to a boat
other times
my car went over a bridge 

my chest and lungs
burn building
crescendo of terror
tension rising
behind my eyes
my head:
a pressure cooker

needing to whistle

I accept death
mouth and lungs
a vacuum 
sucking in
only to find

I can breathe underwater 

and I see
my Irish great (times two) grandparents
drowning
as the Staten Island Ferry sinks
with them on board

I feel the rage burning in her chest
the pressure of millions of colonized generations of the Irish

screaming in her head

freedom murdered
death in diaspora 

finally sucking water

into her lungs

and she swims through the veil

into my dreams

bloated

water laden corpses

newly lifeless buoys

bobbing

left behind 

and she breathes underwater with me

she whispers to me,

follow the call

follow our footsteps

to Staten Island

and Jersey City 

to our Palestinian brothers and sisters

and promise

not to leave them behind

even if we all drown

in the blue

of two colonizer flags

and so I wait

in my dreams

with my great (times two) grandmother 
and Refaat Alareer, Michael Collins, and Anne Frank

and the starved, shot, drowned, hanged, gassed, exiled, vaporized, reanimated (and reeliminated), dismembered masses

for Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya

when he arrives

we swim through the veil

and try again

H.G. is an American poet based in New York. She holds an MA in history and is working on her first verse novel. Her previous poems have appeared in The New Verse News, The Inflectionist Review, The Amphibian, Blue Minaret and is forthcoming in Neon & Smoke.

DEAD AIR

by Alejandro Escudé 




There is no man on the moon tonight.
And it is there, golden and full. I spot it above the empty golf course.
And one can watch as many footage hours of the first mission to the moon
as one desires, but they are never going to return.
Instead, they’re still debating our race. Instead, they’re still defining America.
It’s interesting to learn that Armstrong had to pilot over a cluster of boulders
to find a fitting landing spot. It’s interesting to know
that the astronaut suit-makers did not appreciate Buzz’s leaping, kicking up
moon dust.
And it’s fun to think of Collins circling the pale satellite like a giant man-embryo
inside a metallic uterus. But there is little room to be dumbfounded anymore.
Everyday, the internet steals the soul. They try to make us believe there’s an
alternative to coal.
Last week, Manhattan went dark. Just like in 1977. They tell young students they
don’t need to able to sit in a class anymore and to stay home and learn on an
online school.
They sell a long gun that can take out a small, midwestern town.
Our President is a clown-salesman, a weaponized being sent into the hallowed
chambers of a static, broken government. He is a human improvised explosive
device with a ticking mouth.
People still die in floods in the South.
Yet, they project the Saturn V rocket on the Washington Monument,
our country the equivalent of a middle aged man recalling his high school football
victories with rancid nostalgia, while his children have moved clear across the
country to get away from his unpredictable temper and judgement.
The Russians are still rivals.
Sputnik spins around the world yet.
Does time even really happen to us all?
Did Armstrong really come up with that poetry about one small step?
Such a quiet, distant man,
a man on the moon, three hundred thousand miles away, knowing just what to say
and how to say it—with that pause, that dead air between the word man
and the word one.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

WHAT T***P KNOWS

by Michael Collins

It’s not a question
of knowing it
in your bones:
It’s a question
of knowing it
in their bones—
Rule the mind and all
the rest follows:
Bend ignorance like a bow.
Grow and grow, tower:
Machiavelli said it centuries ago:
Be the giant of hypocrites,
the titan liars; be the giant
of seeming: cut the tree
of knowledge down
and build a stage; bring
your fingers down on the crowd’s great hurts
and know there is no other knowing;
For giants grow larger
in contradiction; they
multiply in lies.


Michael Collins has published one book of poems, one intellectual biography and many uncollected essays and poems.