THE POOL

by Sarah Al-Hajj

Researchers have assessed the likely toll of Israel’s military campaign, including vast indirect casualties. Illustration: Mona Chalabi/The Guardian, July 12, 2024

The pool is three metres long and three metres wide
The pool is seventeen metres deep

40,400 gallons 
183,662 litres
It is the 10th of July
15,000 children dead
23,000 adults dead
38,000 people slaughtered
278 days
In place of numbers being whispered
The pool of blood screams as loud as the orphans left behind

Sarah Al-Hajj is currently 19 and studying English Literature and Psychology at the University of St Andrews. She is the author of the poetry collection Wonky Fingers. Aside from poetry, Sarah also has love of music and songwriting, having been awarded the COBIS Young Composer of The Year in 2023. 

I LEFT BEHIND THE NAMELESS AUTHORS’ BODIES

by Michal Rubin

Israeli demonstrators hold an anti-war protest on Feb. 27 in Tel Aviv, Israel, with signs that say 30,000 to signify the Palestinian death toll in Gaza since Oct. 7. Maya Levin for NPR

Seeking refuge from earth
where the tree of knowledge died
I walked into the moon stripped [off] the uniform

words that lied
oozing blisters

rubbing against the craters
filled with

23,968 stories

27,733 stories

30,035 stories

Michal Rubin is an Israeli, living in Columbia, SC. The impetus for her writing came from the years-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As a psychotherapist, a Cantor and a poet, she brings forth the challenge of distinguishing truths from myths, awareness vs. denial, conformity vs. individuation. Her work was published in Psychotic Education,  The Art and Science of Psychotherapy, Wrath Bearing Tree journal,  Rise Up Journal, Topical Poetry,  Fall-Lines,  The Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Waxing & Waning: A Literary Journal,  South Carolina Bards Poetry Anthology 2023, Palestine-Israel Journal, and a chapbook published by Cathexis Northwest Press.

RED BLOOD OF HUMANS

by George Salamon

Icarius (Diomedes Wounding Aphrodite When She Tries To Recover The Body Of Aeneas) by Arthur Heinrich Wilhelm Fitger via wikigallery.

"Israeli-Hamas war death toll nears 1,500..." CBS News, October 9, 2023

Red hot blood of old men,

red hot blood of toddlers,

red hot blood of grandmas,

red hot blood of soldiers,

red hot blood of musicians,

we spill you in Israel and we

spill you in Gaza, we spill you

in Ukraine and Russia while

they're counting the corpses

and wait until they reach the

numbers when the world's

institutions urge  an end

to bloodshed  and demand

return to the old status quo.

There's no elixir for bloodlust,

there's no drug to cure madness,

there's no vaccine to calm the

fever of death and destruction.

We never conquered humanity's

cruel face, its heart's hungry

gorge, the human form of its

terror.

We heard answers, but watched

as the messengers died on the

cross, by fire or by bullet, we are

left alone by and to ourselves.

Nothing is more terrifying in a

soul-less and bleeding world.

George Salamon was born in Vienna in 1934, as Communists and Fascists were shooting at each other in low-income housing areas. The Holocaust was a decade later, the Israeli-Arab wars of "annihilation" followed, then the bloody wars in Asia and Africa for wealth and economic "supremacy," and the endless Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed and terror for ownership of the "Holy Land." The carousel is still spinning.

MOURNING IN A PANDEMIC

by George Salamon

Protest on 23 April against the Trump administration’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters via The Guardian.

"Faced with an appalling US coronavirus death toll, the right denies the figures."

—The Guardian, May 15, 2020

After close to 90,000 in our land
Have been buried or burned, the
World remains as it is. You grasp
What is essential: They are dead.
Shunning theatrical shallowness or
Surrendering to the lure of eternity,
You seek earthly innocence.

George Salamon does his mourning in St. Louis, MO and most recently has contributed to The Asses of Parnassus, Dissident Voice, and TheNewVerse.News.

THOSE IN THE LIGHT DON'T SEE THOSE IN THE DARK

by George Salamon

The death toll from the sinking of two boats carrying migrants to Yemen from Djibouti rose to 52 on Thursday, the UN migration agency said, appealing to regional leaders to take action to stop such tragedies. . . . The sinking of the vessels, which survivors say were carrying Ethiopians, is the latest tragedy to occur on the risky route used by African migrants seeking work in the Middle East. —News24, January 31, 2019. Photo: People collect bodies on Wednesday along a beach in Obock, Djibouti, after two migrant boats capsized off the coast. — AFP/VNA, January 3, 2019.

"I lost massive amounts of money doing this job. " —President T***p to The New York Times, January 31, 2019


For forty-eight hours here in
The heartland ice and snow
And arctic cold stopped
America's wheels from turning.
Nothing stopped the mouths of
America's rich and powerful,
These time-bombs to the planet's
Survival, these Attilas the Hun to
Its peoples' welfare, from the
Usual lying and whining,
While the poor, the homeless,
The nomadic dispossessed in its
Cities, on its borders, adrift at sea,
Can only live in imaginary places, or,
As migrants in rickety boats, drown
In the frozen seas of the human heart.


George Salamon lives and writes in St. Louis, MO. He thanks Bertolt Brecht for the title.