INDESTRUCTIBLE NARRATIVE

by Peter F. Crowley

An aerial photograph taken by a drone shows displaced Palestinians returning to Rafah, a day after the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas came into effect, Gaza Strip, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Mohammad Abu Samra)

Trump Plan for Gaza “Worse Than Ethnic Cleansing,” Says UN Human Rights Expert: Unlawful deportation or transfer of a population constitutes both a war crime and a crime against humanity. —Truthout, February 9, 2025

The usurper grinned,
broad-brimmed sunbeam hat, squinted eyes
while folding a pair of old,
torn jeans and stuffing them 
into a Goodwill bag
muttering to himself, 

“What was before never was.
What is now is the beginning.
Plow the forest, melt the trees,
farm the virgin land 
and let grass grow over villages.
We will soon forget what never was.”

From a rip in the Goodwill bag, 
a jeans leg fell out.

No matter how deep you bury,
No matter how many villages are liquidated,
You cannot kill the narrative of those
who were there before.


As a prolific author from the Boston area, Peter F. Crowley writes in various forms, including short fiction, op-eds, poetry and academic essays. His writing can be found in 34th Parallel, Pif Magazine, Galway Review, Digging the Fat, Adelaide’s Short Story and Poetry Award anthologies (finalist in both) and The Opiate. He is the author of the poetry books Those Who Hold Up the Earth and Empire’s End, and the short fiction collection That Night and Other Stories.

WHAT IS LEFT?

by Peter F. Crowley

Waiting for rations from an outdoor kitchen in Khan Younis this month. Hunger is now most acute in the southern Gaza Strip.

Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images via The New York Times, May 24, 2024Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images via The NewYork Times, May 24, 2024

     The language you speak has soured, become melancholy, chokes eyelids. Its tendrils lay flaying in dusty streets near occupation crossings in the gated night. Your eyes have grown sallow, as your children's stomachs distended, swollen, as you swat flies from their brow. The streets are your anguish, running, forever running from apartment home to tent back to bombed out abode. Hope was sapped with the last morsel of cat food, finished for yesterday’s only meal, while the powerful stick their blindfolded, deaf eyes deep into the sand, purchasing bulldozers to roll over you.
     You now avoid aid trucks, should they ever appear out of shackled nothingness, to avoid getting gunned down by those fighting terror. 

As a prolific author from the Boston area, Peter F. Crowley writes in various forms, including short fiction, op-eds, poetry and academic essays. His writing can be found in 34^th Parallel, Pif Magazine, Galway Review, Digging the Fat, Adelaide’s Short Story and Poetry Award anthologies (finalist in both) and The Opiate. He is the author of the poetry books Those Who Hold Up the Earth and Empire’s End, and the short fiction collection That Night and Other Stories.