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.

THE EXPERT SHOT

by Lynn White

Photograph: Nasser Ishtayeh/Sopa Images/Shutterstock

Dozens of Israelis from the country’s security, political and cultural elite have threatened legal action against their government over support for Jewish terrorism and an “ideology of ethnic cleansing” in the occupiedWest Bank, according to a leaked letter. —The Guardian, June 24, 2026

I’m an expert shot.

I can hit a child’s head 

every time

when I’m following orders

and sometimes

when I’m not.

I’m an expert shot.

I can hit a surgeon’s hand

every time

when I’m following orders

and sometimes

when I’m not.

I’m an expert shot.

I can hit a young man’s balls

every time

when I’m following orders

and sometimes

when I’m not.

I’m an expert shot.

I can hit a footballer’s foot

every time

when I’m following orders

and sometimes

when I’m not.

I can do other things as well

when I’m ordered

and even

when I’m not.

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality and writes hoping to find an audience for her musings. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Peach Velvet, Light Journal, and So It Goes

HEADLINES JUNE 2026

by Margaret Gannon

PAY-PER-VIEW CAGE FIGHT 

ON WHITE HOUSE LAWN  

 

(Israelis are still killing Palestinians in Gaza) 

 

ICE RAIDS THREATENED 

DURING WORLD CUP FINALS 

 

(Israelis are still killing Palestinians in Gaza) 

 

SAN FRANCISCO D.A. DEMANDS 

15 YEARS JAIL FOR PROTESTERS 

 

(Israelis are still killing Palestinians in Gaza) 

 

SECRETARY OF DEFENSE DECLARES 

MORMONS ARE NOT CHRISTIANS 

 

(Israelis are still killing Palestinians in Gaza) 

 

TRILLIONAIRE’S IPO TITILLATES 

RETIREMENT ACCOUNT OWNERS 

 

(Israelis are still killing Palestinians in Gaza) 

 

STRAIT OF HORMUZ BLOCKED; 

WORLD ECONOMY THREATENED  

 

(Israelis are still killing Palestinians in Gaza) 

 

AMERICAN DEMOCRACY STAGGERS 

TOWARD TWO AND A HALF CENTURIES 

 

(Israelis are still killing Palestinians in Gaza) 

 

 

Margaret Gannon is a retired attorney in San Francisco, CA.

AN ODE TO DAVID, GOLIATH, AND THE NEW YORK KNICKS

by H.G.

Jerry Seinfeld would call me a snob.

Me, a believer that truly brilliant writing
needs a deep understanding
of the wide spectrum of human emotions.

Him, co-creator of a show
about nothing,
yet wise enough to know:
even nothing is something.

And who dare argue
with the man who saved Snapple

and thinks he’s saving Israel
while larping
as the IDF
in 2018,
mock killing Palestinians
who are killed for real
a few miles away.

All to fly 5,677 miles
home
to his NY Knicks
and his courtside tickets.

Now,
2026: Mayor Mamdani’s NYC
the Knicks first championship win
since 1973.

Jerry,
and the whole stadium,

Mayor Mamdani,
and the whole city
at watch parties

electric
street filling joy
spreading
New York
to New Jersey:
an eruption
of celebration,

as one.

The stadium,
a stone’s throw
from Palestinian Brooklyn
intertwined
with Jewish Brooklyn
and Palestinian Patterson
adjacent 
Jewish Fair Lawn

where tensions must be buried
memories are long,
trauma, genetic

and walls
                unnecessary. 

Because
everyday
a better story
can be written
by better people
than Jerry Seinfeld
and me
as on the night of June 13, 2026
when every color and creed 
of New York and New Jersey
chanted

My mayor Muslim, 
my bagel Jewish
my Christian, Dior 
Knicks took it in five, not four*

*Italicised lines based on the viral rhyme created by MD Ahnaf Hossain prior to game 4.

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 Inflectionist Review, The Amphibian, The New Verse News, Blue Minaret and is forthcoming in Neon & Smoke.

THE WEEKEND NEWS

by Bonnie Naradzay

 

 

Crouching amid a pile of rubble that used to be his Gaza home, Mahmoud Hammad scoops dirt into a large sieve and shakes it, looking carefully before dumping it out. In recent days, tiny bones have appeared. Mr Hammad believes they belong to the unborn girl his pregnant wife was carrying when an Israeli air strike hit the family's building more than two years ago, killing his wife and their five children. —ABC (Australia) News, February 12, 2026

Israel used weapons in Gaza that made thousands of Palestinians evaporate. Al Jazeera investigation reveals how US-supplied thermal and thermobaric munitions burning at 3,500C have left no trace of nearly 3,000 Palestinians. Al Jazeera, February 10, 2026 

 On February 13, Russian troops attacked a hospital in Sumy where children are being treated. Two strikes were carried out on the medical facility with attack drones at intervals of about half an hour. —Top News in Ukraine, February 13, 2026 

Putin is targeting Ukrainian children now; we must not look away.
With a flour sifter, a father in Gaza searches for his incinerated family
while Putin’s precision drones obliterate schools, hospitals, daycares.
Using shovels, people helped the father locate the rubble of his home.
 
With a flour sifter, a father in Gaza searches for his incinerated family.
Praise be to God, he says, pointing to the pile of bone fragments.
Using shovels, people helped him locate the rubble of his home.
In Gaza, the living are surrounded by the dead.
 
Praise be to God, Hammad says, pointing to a pile of bone fragments.
Israel returned decomposed bodies showing severe mutilation, abuse.
In Gaza, the living are surrounded by the dead.
Israel has restricted the use of bulldozers to excavate the corpses.
 
Israel returned decomposed bodies showing severe mutilation, abuse.
Hammad keeps a photo of his family, smiling, when they were alive.
Israel has restricted the use of bulldozers to excavate the corpses.
Body parts returned in boxes contain only skulls and some bones.
 
Hammad has a photo of his family, smiling, when they were still alive,
while Putin’s precision drones obliterate schools, hospitals, daycares.
Body parts returned in 66 boxes contained only skulls and a few bones,
but Putin is targeting Ukrainian children now; we must not look away.

 

 

Bonnie Naradzay has been leading weekly poetry sessions for homeless people at Street Sense and at Miriam’s Kitchen and also at a retirement community, all in Washington, DC.  While at Harvard University in the late 1960s, she was in Robert Lowell’s class on “The King James Bible as English Literature.” In 2010 she was awarded the University of New Orleans Poetry Prize–-a month’s stay in Northern Italy–-in the South Tyrol castle of Ezra Pound’s daughter Mary. A 2017 graduate of the St John’s College (Annapolis) Graduate Institute, her book of poems Invited to the Feast was published by Slant Books in October 2025; three of the poems were nominated for Pushcart Prizes. 

END GAME

by Paul A. Freeman

Almost 55,000 children in Gaza are estimated to be acutely malnourished, far more than have so far been ifentified as victims of the potentially lethal condition, a study published in the Lancet, the respected international medical periodical, has revealed. —The Guardian, October 8, 2025

 
The end game always was annihilation;
no two-state compromise—a single nation
arising from two genocides, one borne,
the other wreaked on Palestinians torn
from city, town and village decades past,
the West Bank and the Gaza Strip their last
two footholds. See the hospitals and schools
bombarded out of malice. We’re not fools!
As bombs rain down from drone-filled skies on homes,
encampments, playgrounds, mosque and masjid domes;
as roads are ripped to smithereens and aid
is bait, a lure, where civil lives are paid
through bullets to enhance starvation’s bite;
as trudging refugees endure a plight
designed to force them from ancestral lands,
anyone who’s human wrings their hands,
knowing when the war creeps to cessation,
the end game always was annihilation.

Paul A. Freeman is an English teacher. He is the author of The Movement, a dystopia-Americana novel set in a future United States. It is available from Amazon as an ebook download and as a paperback. His first book, Rumours of Ophir, a crime novel taught at ‘O’ level in Zimbabwean high schools, was also translated into German. In addition to having two novels, a children’s book and an 18,000-word narrative poem (Robin Hood and Friar Tuck: Zombie Killers!) commercially published, Paul is the author of numerous published short stories, poems and articles. He works and resides in Mauritania, Africa.

THEN THEY WERE MINE

by Corey Weinstein

Witnesses say that the IDF is deliberately killing Palestinians at aid distribution centres in Gaza run by the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Cartoon by Muzaffar Yulchiboev.

Israeli plan for forced transfer of Gaza’s population ‘a blueprint for crimes against humanity’ —The Guardian, July 7, 2025

Hear it right here. The past is now,
but wrong place, wrong people.
Last time they were mine, desperate,
last gasp assault in Spring of ’43.
 
Wrong place, the Mideast, wronged Palestinians.
Is there dignity not victory for a vanquished people?
In ’43 we yelled into the Nazi tornado,
death throes of the Warsaw Ghetto 300,000.
 
Feeble return fire from a vanquished people.
As Gaza starves, the West Bank terrorized,
famine, genocide of Gaza’s ghetto of two million.
Will the end game be the same weak thrust and slaughter?
 
Tanks fire on the hungry, settlers smash homes, olive groves.
In Warsaw they were mine, Jews to the very last bullet.
Will the world let the endgame be the same last bullet,
can our ears bear to hear the past in this terrible now?
 
As for me, I will never forget, Never Again, 
no matter who, no matter where or when.

Corey Weinstein’s poetry has been published in Haight Asbury Literary Journal, Vistas and Byways, The New Verse News, Our California 2024, The Ekphrastic Review, Forum (City College of San Francisco), California State Poetry Society, Visitant, Abandoned Mine, Speak Poetry of San Mateo County, California State Poetry Society and Jewish Currents, and he wrote and performed a singspiel called Erased: Babi Yar, the SS and Me. He is a retired physician and has been an advocate for prisoner rights, founded California Prison Focus, and he led the American Public Health Association’s Prison Committee for many years. In his free time, he hosts San Francisco OLLI’s Poetry Workshop Circle and plays the clarinet in his local jazz band, Tandem, his synagogue choir and woodwind ensembles.

PILLOW FROM PALESTINE

by Debra Orben

Israeli forces killed at least 60 Palestinians in Gaza on Wednesday, most of them as they were seeking food from a US-Israeli distribution scheme, according to local health authorities. Medical officials said at least 25 people were killed and dozens wounded as they approached a food distribution centre run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), near Netzarim in central Gaza. Later in the day, at least 14 people were killed by Israeli gunfire as they were moving towards another GHF distribution site, in Rafah, at Gaza’s southern border. On Tuesday Israeli troops killed 17 Palestinians around GHF sites. –The Guardian, June 11, 2025

           Resting silently on our couch

        a pillow we have had for a long time

off-white woven fabric, hand embroidery,

four rows of a repeating pattern, star flowers

mingled with hearts that touch and overlap

  stitched only in my favorite color, turquoise

  purchased from a friend of a friend visiting

    from the Middle East, selling handwork

      by women, women sewing designs

          to help their families survive 

            and thrive under difficult  

                       circumstances.

 

                 Today, I gaze at our pillow

              soft and lovely in its simple artistry

         noticing only harsh edges and rough reality

     seeing famished faces, bloodshot vacant eyes,

      people devoid of hope, hungry, and destitute

      and the silence of our gentle keepsake mocks

          the unrelenting screams of unheard cries

            ignores the daily suffering of all in Gaza

            cruelty fueled by the fervor of revenge

               an excess of indifference, what more

                  can we do to end war, change

                            circumstances?

Debra Orben is a retired elementary teacher who believes in life-long learning.  She enjoys volunteering with children, gardening, reading, and writing.  She works to plant trees, protect biodiversity, and address climate change.  As a Quaker she believes that all people deserve a just, healthy, and peaceful world.  She appreciates the beauty and diversity of human beliefs and cultures and the diversity of the natural world.  She has much to learn and writes about it. 

BOULDER

by Jeremy Nathan Marks

Sunrise over the Flatiron Range near Boulder, Colorado.

A man has been charged with a federal hate crime and multiple other felonies after he allegedly used a makeshift flamethrower and incendiary devices to attack a crowd of people who were raising awareness for Israeli hostages in Gaza, injuring 12 victims. Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, is alleged to have shouted “Free Palestine” as he attacked the crowd on Sunday. The FBI said Soliman told police he planned the attack for a year and had specifically targeted what he described as the “Zionist group”, the Associated Press reported. —The Guardian, June 3, 2025

The Boulder mountains began as fire

perhaps that’s why they are known

as the Flatiron Range

 

If you look into their hearts you will find

fossils from the sea. Simple single cellular

creatures. Who by fire and Who by water.

 

In America, many folks like to say our story

will end in flame. I’ve seen John 3:16 signs

at Coors Field and when Mel Gibson made 

his film about Jesus, some pastor hung 

a billboard above I-25 saying the Jews 

Killed Christ. Jews kill Jews. Who gets to 

say.

 

A man throwing Molotov cocktails 

at people who want Israeli hostages freed, 

is he the authority on Jews Israel’s 

ambassador and foreign minister believe 

him to be.

 

The pressure which births mountains is 

hard to imagine. What it takes to sustain 

foundational myths across time, rebuild

temples, dream of olive trees is a pressure 

of perhaps equal force in human terms 

and very hard to fathom.

As I write this, someone would have 

you believe Jews possess a divine power 

to solve or cause all the worst excesses 

in the world. They might also think all

Palestinians want an eye for an eye. 

What is a Mashiac. Who are the prophets. 

Should we ask the mountains over Boulder.

 

The work of the Flatirons is not malevolent.

Moses didn’t receive tablets from Sinai 

but on it. Universes come and go with each 

blink of the high peaks.

Brahma sits on his lotus. 

Generals confer in bunkers.

The Earth’s crust floats on lava. 

Hashem has many names that depict 

His moods.

Not everyone says He is merely a He.

Christians speak of trinities.

 

Today, free speech invites a fire fight. 

We assemble in our mortar formations. 

I pumped gas this morning 

and it’s all I can taste.

Jeremy Nathan Marks is a former Colorado resident who lives and writes in Canada.