WHAT THE LIVING HAVE SEEN

by Lynne Rappaport

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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. 

MY FATHER'S TREES

by Rikki Santer

The Yatir Forest in Israel ends at the border with Palestine. The largest human-created forest in Israel, 12-square-mile Yatir was created in the 1960s on semi-arid land with four million trees, 90 percent of them Aleppo pine. —National Geographic, March 24, 2023

after Hamas, after Gaza

A ring of trees in Israel

encircle his legacy, a memorial

from his bowling buddies

three decades ago. The certificate

declared from Leviticus:

When you come to the land

you shall plant trees.

My father never visited that land

and neither have I but I trust

his trees are there still in the Negev Desert

perhaps an arboreal Heinz 57 of carob,

redbud, olive, almond, pear, cypress,

cedar, and oak. 

Bologna sauce is what my father

cooed he’d squeeze out of me

when his hugs were hymns

in gratitude for finally finding

the good life with wife, daughter, son.

His ideas of assimilated Jewish

migrated to my secular shaping. 

Synagogue just on high holidays, 

Sabbath just another Friday night

for cheeseburgers and Hogan’s Heroes. 

And Zionist? He was more B’nai Brith 

bowling league and temple dues.

These days I imagine his Israeli trees

forsaken by milk and honey. Their roots

sponging up bloodshed. Their skins

trembling with gunfire and bomb.

Their bent architecture davening

a shameful Kaddish.

Their barren fractals of branches

reaching and reaching 

for nothing but air.

Rikki Santer’s poetry has been published widely and has received many honors including several Pushcart and Ohioana book award nominations, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and in 2023 she was named Ohio Poet of the Year.  She is currently serving as vice-president of the Ohio Poetry Association and is a member of the teaching artist roster of the Ohio Arts Council.  Her twelfth poetry collection Resurrection Letter: Leonora, Her Tarot, and Me is a sequence in tribute to the surrealist artist Leonora Carrington.

MOVING RIGHT ALONG

by Steven Kent

They’re saying now the quiet parts out loud,
These candidates and pundits. Boys are Proud,
Who bigotry and bloodshed advocate
In incoherent rage against the State.
What voices once spoke reason now are still
As zealots do the talking on the Hill.
The party on the Left moved to the Right;
The party on the Right moved out of sight.

Steven Kent is the poetic alter ego of writer, musician, and Oxford comma enthusiast Kent Burnside. His work appears in Light, Lighten Up Online, Snakeskin, and OEDILF, among others.

LITTLE ROHINGYA

by Probal Basak

Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi is expected to defend her military against allegations of genocide at the International Court of Justice. The army is accused of targeting the country's Rohingya Muslim minority in 2017. A documentary being aired on Al Jazeera sheds new light on the abuses. Al Jazeera's Osama Bin Javaid reports. —Al Jazeera, November 24, 2019

I’m Alfred, Suu, caged
in your dark cabinet. Once
a gilded trophy, now stained
with blood, Suu, I am here,
seeking freedom from fear.

Omar appears in my dreams
as red tears from the beachfront
of Cox’s Bazar flow like a stream,
Suu, do you know little Omar?

Omar met me at the town square at midnight,
waking from nightmares after the family burial,
to share dreams of rowing across the bloody sea.
In the fog of gunpowder, I walked by his side over
bruised sisters, raped mothers, dead fathers,
brothers boot-stamped.

No, Omar didn’t ask me to desert you,
Suu. It’s me, haunted by bloodshed,
your glittering bearded Alfred.
It’s time you loosen my harness.

Oh! Suu, my silent mistress!
I too want to cross over to join
Omar at Cox’s Bazar.

Oh!  The power of powerless
chokes me here, Suu, I am here,
seeking freedom from fear.

Probal Basak is employed as on officer with the Department of Information & Cultural Affairs, Government of West Bengal, India. His parents, refugees from Bangladesh, settled in West Bengal during the 1971 India-Pakistan war. Probal grew up hearing stories of of the suffering of millions of migrated people.