TALKING ABOUT TREES

by Bonnie Naradzay

 

 

Father of Baby Shot Dead by IDF in Hebron: I Stopped When Asked, Then They Opened Fire. 'The soldier was about ten meters away from me. He saw me, he saw my wife and the children. The car windows were not dark, it was daylight and everything was clear. You can't say he didn't see that it was a family,' Fahed Abu Haykal told Haaretz, June 6, 2026.
 

I’d like to write like Tu Fu, whose poems
are like branches of trees reflected in water –
 
the branches of trees.  Like a group of trees seen
through clouds or mist, they appear, then disappear.
 
But I learned that today Israeli forces murdered
a Palestinian baby, in the West Bank, in Hebron.
 
He was in his mother’s arms, in a car the soldiers
shot into. They’d ordered the driver, the baby’s father,
 
to stop, and he did as they said, and raised his hands
in submission. The baby’s mother sustained shrapnel
 
injuries near her heart, may not survive.  The soldiers
had been standing idly in the street. After firing
 
into the car, they walked unconcernedly away from
their carnage. Today in Gaza City, Israelis aimed
 
a drone at the Jawazat camp for people who’d been
displaced. The drone killed seven, wounded 15 others. 
 
How can I honor the lives of Palestinians?  Like a group
of olive trees, they are destroyed and made to disappear.


Bonnie Naradzay is the author of Invited to the Feast (Slant Books, 2025). Her poems have appeared in AGNI, The American Journal of Poetry, Birmingham Poetry Review, Cider Press Review, The Georgia Review, Cumberland River Review, Dappled Things, New Letters, Poet Lore, Rhino, Innisfree, and many other journals.  While at Harvard University’ graduate program, she was in Robert Lowell’s class on “The King James Bible as English Poetry.”  She was a winner of the University of New Orleans Poetry Prize (a month’s stay in the South Tyrol castle of Ezra Pound’s daughter Mary). Three of her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart prize. She is a 2017 graduate of the St John’s College Graduate Institute. She has led poetry classes at the DC Women’s Jail and currently leads weekly poetry sessions at Street Sense and at a retirement community both in Washington, DC.   

REMINDERS

by Phyllis Wax

Israeli settlers beat a Palestinian man in the occupied West Bank, stripped him naked, tied his arms and legs and then zip-tied his penis, he, his family members and another witness said on Wednesday. “I thought I was going to die,” the man, Suhaib Abualkebash (above), a 29-year-old shepherd, told The New York Times. “I thought this was the end.” Photo by Afif Amireh.

Even as ghosts their bones

are visible: ribs, backbones,

sticks of arms and legs.

But the occupiers in the West Bank,

the army in Gaza,

do not see the ghosts

of their ancestors,

do not hear their rattling bones

or their ghostly admonishments

not to duplicate the cruelty done to them,

seem deaf to the idea that never again

means not to anyone.

Phyllis Wax writes in Milwaukee, where she observes the goings-on of the country and the world and is being cured of her delusions. She has read in coffee houses, bars, libraries and on the radio, and has participated in poet/fiber artist collaborations. Among the journals in which her work has appeared are Gyroscope Review, Writers Resist, Jerry Jazz Musician, Rise Up Review, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Wordpeace, The New Verse News, Naugatuck River Review, Your Daily Poem, Feral.

WHAT THE LIVING HAVE SEEN

by Lynne Rappaport

Donate here.

How many days has it been now, since 10/7,

that those Israelis held captive in tunnels in Gaza

have been without their freedom,

separated from all of life?

 

Their faces are plastered onto giant posters

for passersby in Tel Aviv to see,

burning these hostages’ plight into memory,

their country longing for it to end.

 

What can the prisoners know of the crisis above the tunnels?

The violence, devastation, rubble, blocked aid trucks, hunger,

children’s lives cut short.

Failed attempts at a lasting ceasefire.

Instead, more retaliations, an eye for an eye,

an endless war.

 

Bring them safely home.

Let them begin healing.

 

The Palestinian family I’m sending money to in Gaza—

Home destroyed, living in a tent,

subsisting on lentils and hot salt water—

Had a moment of joy welcoming a baby boy,

Husband venturing out to buy overpriced flour

for his wife and 2-year-old son. 

She needed medication to prevent blood clots,

needs nourishment to sustain their newborn child. 

They all need superhuman strength.

 

Almost 500 online donors, sending funds for a year,

trying to keep this family going, give them some hope. 

Will they rebuild their home in Gaza someday? How will they manage until then?

Will Gaza even still exist for them? Will they be displaced again?

Will these two children who’ve survived ever know a free Palestine?

What can the Gazans know of the air raid sirens, during the night,

Families hurrying to bomb shelters and safe rooms

In Tel Aviv apartment buildings?

 

Bring all safely home. 

End the occupation,

The unholy bloodshed.

 

The ghosts of the lost ones permeate the ashen air. 

Restless dreams, nightmares, 

and oh,

what the living have seen,

have seen,

have endured.

Author’s note: This poem came out of a freewrite session to the poem “Beannacht” by John O’Donahue, in Kathryn Santana Goldman’s Your Write to Resilience OLLI class, summer 2025.

Lynne Rappaport is a 72-year-old woman originally from New York who has lived in San Francisco for over 50 years. Retired from teaching ESL to immigrant adults, she enjoys poetry, nature, music, and Tai Chi. She dedicates this poem to her late cousin, Canadian poet Bobbie Ogletree, and to our late grandfather Jacob B. Sacks, born in Palestine (Jerusalem) in 1888. He immigrated to New York in 1912. 

CINDER AND SADNESS

by Tricia L. Somers

AP File Photo Deir Al-Balah, Gaza Strip, October 2023

Cinder block pillows  

and satin tears

Our sheets tied

into escape hatches again

The exquisite pain

of a child a mortal sin

Who has enough courage

to not slaughter the children ?

Who is strong enough

to resist the temptation

to crush the soft spot

of a newborn baby's skull?

Anyone? Anyone at all?

Every last Palestinian child

has more bravery and heart

than the moral army

sent to "cut the grass"

With each child killed

we go more in the red

We're going down fast

A centrifugal vortex

Are you strong enough

to win an election ?

Or too weak to stop

the killing of children?

Tricia L. Somers is in Los Angeles CA where she lives with her Significant Other and a couple of other crazy cats. You can find her work on the pages of The American Dissident. Online her poetry can be found at The New Verse News and Rat's Ass Review. For a different perspective on current issues visit her at Bitch n Complain on Substack.

SEARCHING

by Karen Warinsky

I type “Is Bisan” in the search bar

and the next two words appear automatically

with their furtive question mark, “still alive?”

 

Bisan, a Palestinian journalist popped into my Facebook feed

one morning during this latest Mideast roil,

her fresh, round face full of promise 

her troubled brown eyes alert as she posted

cell phone videos of the wreckage of Palestine, the slaughter of the people.

The videos are raw, wound the eyes, sear the soul.

She posts each time she must flee, relocate,

so many displacements now she’s lost count.

One day she shows us her favorite flower

the passionate poppy, Hannoun, red, alive

pushing forth in the spring air,

another day she videos a small boy selling homemade potato chips.

“Delicious, tasty!” she says, almost smiling,

boys flying kites on the beach behind her.  

These moments are her sustenance 

as she shares pictures of her home in the Gaza ruins,

a video of the day a bomb at Al-Shifa hospital just missed her

by two minutes,

her refugee life in Rafah,

stories of others spit out by this war

hundreds of thousands with no safe place to go,

their way home stalled, like the peace talks.

 

Bisan is 27.

She is forthright, emotional, outraged, 

bewildered.

She wonders, "Where is help?  Why is this allowed to go on?"  

Seven months now.

 

She looks into the phone’s lens. Begs, “Don’t get used to

what is happening in Gaza!”

She is searching for rationality, for assistance.

I will keep searching for her, 

pray she can send more videos of children flying their kites, 

sending up wishes,

pray that those wishes get answered.

Karen Warinsky is the author of three collections: Gold in Autumn (2020), Sunrise Ruby (2022 Human Error Publishing), and Dining with War (2023 Alien Buddha Press); a former finalist of the Montreal International Poetry Contest; a Best of the Net nominee; and runs Poets at Large.

THE ARAVA

by Betty Cohen

Fathom deputy editor Jack Omer-Jackaman speaks with Tareq Abu Hamed and Eliza Mayo of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, an academic research centre operating with the premise that cooperation on environmental issues that impact all the people in the Middle East is an effective path to building cooperation among communities that have been locked in conflict for generations. The student body of the Arava Institute, located on Kibbutz Keturah, just north of Eilat in the southernmost part of Israel, is comprised of one-third Israeli Arabs, one-third Jewish Israelis and one-third internationals from neighboring Arab countries. Over the course of an academic semester, these students work together on solutions to issues such as climate change and water scarcity and cleanliness, while developing trust and working relationships. (Source: Intermountain Jewish News, February 22, 2024)

I sit on the stone patio
of the apartment
on a kibbutz
in the desert
which settlers
have brought to bloom.
Trees cast shadows 
patterning the red bricks
with shadows of leaves.
Indoors ten-inch tan tiles
form the cool floor
of the rented furnished
two bedroom apartment.
This visit is to meet
my newborn great-grandson.
The air is thick with silence,
the sky pale blue.
Prior to settling in the desert
to make the desert bloom,
his father, my grandson,
lived with me.
When the kibbutz
was newly formed
a neighboring Palestinian farmer,
across the border,
came to present the kibbutz
with a camel,
his token of Peace,
which still reigns
here in the Arava.

Betty Cohen, a Princeton NJ resident, is now in Arava to see her great-grandson. She introduced this poem via Zoom to her Princeton-area weekly poetry workshop colleagues.

WAY OF LIFE FOR THREE YOUNG WOMEN

by Joanne Kennedy Frazer 

in observance of International Women’s Day

Elizabeth 

20 years old,

junior at an elite US university,

majors in physics.

Awarded a summer internship,

she will fly to Asia,

live at a Japanese university

while conducting research.

 

 

Gabriella

tiene 20 años,

completed high school, 

college beyond reach,

worked menial village jobs

until employment options dried up.

She will travel a perilous journey 

to the US in search of new opportunities. 

 

 

Bahija

تبلغ من العمر 20 عاما

student at college

on a campus now rubble, 

her family is no more, all slaughtered.

Hunger, destruction, death are her relatives.

When bombings start she runs to unsafe shelters

pleading with the world, why are you not helping us?

Author’s Note: UN International Women's Day, March 8, occurs during Women's History Month.  The UN resolution declares "full enjoyment of human rights...(requires women's) active participation, equality and development..." To honor its intention, I imagine and enter into the stories of three women "internationally" to illustrate vast differences in their lived experiences. While there has been modest advancement in some parts of the world, we have a long way to go globally in realizing the UN resolution.

 

Joanne Kennedy Frazer, a former justice and peace educator/director for faith based entities, enjoys spending her silvering years writing poetry and publishing in numerous anthologies, journals, and ezines. Her work is informed by social justice concerns and beauty of the natural world. She has written two chapbooks. Most recently, Seasonings (Kelsay Press) has been nominated for the Eric Hoffer Book Award.  She lives in Durham, NC.

MY WIFE SENDS ME A VIDEO OF ISRAELI ARABS AND JEWS SINGING “SOMEWHERE” FROM WEST SIDE STORY AND ASKS ME TO WRITE A POEM

by Dick Westheimer

The song sung in three tongues

swells and descends with the beat 

Bernstein intended, “Someday”

in English the tenors hold every note 

as they would hope. In Hebrew, 

full throated soprano voices sing,  

“We'll find a new way of living,”

followed in muted harmony, 

Arabic singers whisper about “a way 

of forgiving.” The music fills me

with the stuff of hope, of a 

new way of living and then 

I remember the plot, 

the Sharks and the Jets

didn’t make their lousy world

and Tony always had to die.

And as the the music fades

Tony rasps, “I didn’t believe 

hard enough.” But then 

I remember Maria’s 

final note was sung 

over the top 

of a major chord.

Dick Westheimer lives in rural southwest Ohio. He is winner of the 2023 Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, a Rattle Poetry Prize finalist, a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee. His poems have appeared or upcoming in Whale Road Review, Rattle, OneArt, Abandon Journal, Stone Poetry Quarterly, and Minyan. His chapbook A Sword in Both Hands, Poems Responding to Russia’s War on Ukraine is published by SheilaNaGig.

RESIGNED

by Indran Amirthanayagam

Having now seen how quickly the truth can become a casualty amid controversy, I’d urge a broader caution: At tense moments, every one of us must be more skeptical than ever of the loudest and most extreme voices in our culture, however well organized or well connected they might be. Too often they are pursuing self-serving agendas that should be met with more questions and less credulity. —Claudine Gay, The New York Times, January 3, 2024

Some attribution errors, not deliberate,

in academic essays, and her posture
of defending freedom of expression

in campus rallies, for this the first

black woman to head the country's

most famous university resigned?

For the witch-hunt of our McCarthy

times, communism replaced by

anti-Semitism, even if Palestinian

people are also Semitic, even if

murder of twenty-two thousand

civilians, including eight thousand

children in Gaza does not mean

a holocaust, even if now

on the entire earth there

are about 700,000 thousand

people in a state of famine,

of whom 577,000 live in Gaza,

four out of every five Palestinian.

And at Harvard University (also

at Penn), female leaders resigned.

Indran Amirthanayagam is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Mad Hat Press has just published his love song to Haiti: Powèt Nan Pò A (Poet of the Port). Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is a collection of Indran's poems. Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun. (Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

I AM GAZA

by Ralph Dranow

Poster (via Flickr) created by Michael Thompson for a Gaza Freedom March… in 2010!

I am a three-year-old Palestinian boy,

shattered body a sorrowful song

sung by an Israeli bomb.

I am an 18-year-old Israeli soldier,

the stench of death seeping into my nostrils,

invading my whole being.

I am a Palestinian mother, my heart weeping,

my six-year-old daughter fainting from hunger,

my infant son fading fast.

I am Benjamin Netanyahu,

clinging to the life raft of power

in a turbulent sea.

I am a horrified Jewish-American,

the thread of connection sewn into my cells,

demanding an end to the killing.

I am an Israeli settler in the West Bank,

wishing the Palestinians, like noxious insects,

would just go away.

I am an evangelical Christian,

eager for Hamas to be demolished,

so that the Kingdom of Christ can manifest in Israel.

I am a Hamas soldier,

enclosed inside the righteous armor of my cause,

prepared to kill and die for the liberation of Palestine.

I am an Israeli peace activist,

murdered by Hamas on October 7th,

my body destroyed, my spirit refusing to die.

Ralph Dranow works as an editor, writing coach, and poetry teacher. His poems and articles have been widely published. He lives in Oakland, California with his family.

A TOMATO FOR JOSEPH

by Liz Rose Shulman

Haidar Eid’s book available for pre-order today; shipping tomorrow from LeftWord Books.

Note: The following poem adapts language from Haidar Eid’s Facebook page, with his permission. He is currently trapped in Gaza. Haidar Eid is an Associate Professor of Postcolonial and Postmodern Literature at Gaza’s al-Aqsa University. As of this writing, he is alive. 
 
 
I am standing over the ruins of a house in Gaza City 
peering at the horizon
 
Please don’t let our posts go unnoticed 
This is the only alternative we have 
 
Where is Abu Muhammad
under the rubble
Where is Muhammad’s mother
under the rubble
Where is Muhammad
under the rubble
 
I’ve just received the long awaited news of my book while I am trying to stay alive
LeftWord Books is publishing my latest work 
Decolonising the Palestinian Mind
 
My former student Samah Eid has risen
“My heart is ripped out of my ribs.”
 
Haidar Eid updated his profile picture
 
Haidar Eid updated his profile picture
 
They need Palestinian fig leaves 
Sorry, I don’t feel like doing that 
There are others who are more equipped to deal with that.
 
I am a South African Palestinian literature professor in Gaza right now, 
with a wife 
and two small daughters
 
My kind dentist, artist Oraib Rayyes has risen
My colleague and co-founder
of the Department of English
at Al-Aqsa University, 
Abdul Rahman Elhour, has risen 
with 14 members of his family.
 
Some are still under the rubble
 
My friend, ex-student Khalil Abu Yahya, has risen
with his wife, Tasnim 
and two daughters
 
This was my home
 
Where is Salwa
under the rubble
Where is Magda
under the rubble
Where is Mahmoud
under the rubble
 
Where is the rest of the family at
 
Nine members of my family were killed today
One man 
three women 
and five children
 
Progressive activist friend, mother of Prince Samira Rafiqah, 
Our friend Em ElAmeer Samira has risen
Haidar Eid updated his profile picture
 
On the hospital floor
wounded children sit next to their injured mother
one aids her as she receives treatment after a bombing
of a family’s home in the Gaza Strip
 
Why would any country vote,
even veto, 
against a humanitarian ceasefire
 
Haidar Eid updated his profile picture
 
Haidar Eid updated his profile picture
 
The home is a lover
A woman who has feelings for you 
and for whom you have feelings.
She is you and you are her. 
There are no boundaries 
No separation
When the home is demolished 
something within you dies.
The sweet story of Youssef Al-Baydani as narrated by his mother: 
“Mom, I’m hungry, I want to eat.
Don’t be afraid, my love, 
I will make you a pan of tomato
I went out to the house of Um Mahmoud, my neighbor, 
in search of a tomato 
to quench Joseph’s hunger,
hoping to find a tomato for Joseph. 
I waited at the door for Joseph to come back from school every day 
I waited for him 
in front of the door every day 
welcomed him with my arms
and a tomato grill that he loves.
How can I wait anymore when Joseph is no longer here
How can a mother protect her son in war?”
 
In this house, a woman lived with her husband 
three sons 
and three daughters. 
They had also provided refuge to relatives from northern Gaza 
who had been displaced
 
Besan was a third-year medical student 
she loved her cat 
Besan was killed with all her family and her cat
 
The young columnist of We Are Not Numbers, Yousef Dawas, has risen
along with his entire family.
He attended my lecture on Postcolonial literature last month.
A few months ago he wrote the article 
“Who will pay for the 20 years we lost?”
 
“I wish my eyes were a sea
where my eyelids could dwell.”
 
In 2014, I performed “Love in the Time of Genocide” 
adapted from a poem 
by the late Egyptian poet Abdul Rahim Mansour. 
 
What we need for literature 
and literary criticism 
is a critique of institutional thought
by offering an alternative
 
A will written by a little girl from Gaza via Anat Matar:
“My name is Haya and I will write my will now.
My money: 45 for my mother, 5 for Zeina, 5 for Hashem,
5 for my grandma, 5 for Aunt Heba and five for Aunt Mariam, 5 for Uncle Abdo and Aunt Sarah
My toys and all my stuff: for my friends Deema, Menna, and Amal, and Zeina (my sister)
My clothes: to my uncle’s daughters and if there’s anything left, donate them
My shoes: donate them to the poor and vulnerable
after washing them, of course.”
 
To white, mainstream media
As per my cardiologist’s instructions, plz do not call me
 
Haidar Eid updated his profile picture
 
Haidar Eid updated his profile picture
 
Haidar Eid updated his profile picture
 
They need Palestinian fig leaves 
Sorry, I don't feel like doing that 
There are others who are more equipped to deal with that.

Liz Rose Shulman’s work has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Review, Mondoweiss, The Smart Set, and Tablet Magazine, among others. She teaches English at Evanston Township High School and in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. She lives in Chicago.