PLOT FORTY-TWO

by Shirin Jabalameli 

Plot Forty-Two is located in Behesht-e Zahra Cemetery in Tehran, Iran. It is associated with those killed in the recent war involving Iran, the United States, and Israel.

In Plot Forty-Two,

the war is not yet over.

A bullet

is lodged in the throat of the earth,

and every season,

a fresh clover

pushes through its mouth.

On the stones

are names

cut short

by the blast;

names that, if called aloud,

might make someone

turn back

beyond the trench.

Here,

death smells of metal;

of a shirt

that never dried in the sun,

of gunpowder

that, months later,

still clings to the mothers’ hair.

The war

came this far

on mud-caked boots.

Even now,

its footprints

remain

on the sleeping stones.

In one of the graves,

a child lies buried.

In his last drawing,

there was a sky

and the very airplane

that had passed overhead.

And that soldier,

perhaps he is still running in his dreams,

from one trench to another,

his mouth full of earth,

a letter in his breast pocket

that never reached its destination.

No one knows

what he was thinking

in his final moments.

An empty magazine?

His brother’s hands?

The window he had meant to repair

before winter?

Perhaps

all he wanted

was a glass of water.

And this

is the most terrible thing about war:

that even on the brink

of disappearing,

a human being

can still feel thirsty.

Beside one of the stones,

a mother sits.

She does not weep.

She says nothing.

With her fingernail,

she brushes the dirt

from a name

that, each time,

sinks back into the earth.

As though she were still

brushing dust from his shoulders,

straightening his collar

for his return.

In Plot Forty-Two,

the wind blows,

and no one carries a gun.

Yet as I walk among the graves,

I lower my head,

as though I still had to cross

a stretch of ground

that might explode

at any moment.

Beyond the wall,

the city is busy buying bread.

Buses arrive.

Traffic lights turn green.

Someone quickens their pace

to avoid being late.

And here,

beneath the earth,

a young man remains

forever the age

at which he should have begun to live.

Sometimes,

this is what war is:

not the sound of an explosion,

but a rented room,

a broken radio,

a shirt hanging behind a door,

someone

who was supposed to come home

on Friday evening.

And now,

in Plot Forty-Two,

the roots of trees

thread through bones,

unaware

which side of the front line

they belong to.

I leave the cemetery.

I slip my hand into my pocket.

The key is cold,

and the cold

climbs to my wrist.

Suddenly,

I think of home:

a door closing,

the clatter of dishes in the kitchen,

someone in the next room

calling out,

“Are you home?”

And I think of all those who are gone,

all those

who will never again

be asked

that question.

Shirin Jabalameli is an Iranian poet, artist, and writer. Her poems have appeared in international journals including Braided Way Magazine (USA), The Lake (UK), The New Verse News (USA), and Poetry Super Highway(USA), where she was selected Poet of the Week. She has authored books including Crows Rarely Laugh, Apranik, 101 Moments, and 25 Fell from the Frame; her latest book titled Beneath the Skin of Tehran was recently published. She was nominated for the 2026 Pushcart Prize for her poem “The Lineage of Birds”. Her short story “The Red Thread” was selected among the Top 25 Works Worldwide for the Hannah Arendt Special Edition presented by the International Human Rights Art Movement in Manhattan, New York.

THE LAND REMEMBERS THEIR NAMES

by Ahmed Dremly 

The ground was silent that morning.

Not empty—

silent.

It carried beneath its chest

the weight of a family,

the dreams of children,

the hands of mothers,

the footsteps of those

who once walked upon it.

The sky stood above Gaza,

wide and uncertain,

as if even the heavens

did not know where to place their grief.

After one thousand and ninety-nine days,

the earth opened her hands.

Not to take them,

but to return them.

One hundred and twelve souls

from the Abu Sharia family

rose from beneath the rubble—

doctors,

engineers,

mothers,

fathers,

children,

infants.

A whole family

written back into the memory of the land.

Gaza did not receive bodies that day.

She received names.

A mother of five stood on a rooftop,

holding flowers,

candies,

and the tears she could not hide.

She called to the sky:

Long live the martyrs.

A child who lost both parents

looked through a broken window.

The world was shattered before his eyes,

yet his voice remained:

For you, Palestine.

A man who survived

the death of everyone he loved

carried the remains of his family—

bones, photographs, memories.

He carried a universe

inside his wounded hands.

And he said:

The martyrs do not die.

An uncle who buried fifteen hearts

raised his voice:

Allah Akbar.

Not as a farewell,

but as a promise.

This land knows our footsteps.

This soil knows our names.

We live here.

We die here.

The streets of Gaza filled again.

Not only with mourning,

but with thousands of hands

reaching for the flag-covered bodies,

fighting for the honor

of carrying those

who carried Gaza before them.

Coffee was poured beside graves.

Stories were shared beside ruins.

And every wound

opened another memory.

Today,

the rubble has finally spoken.

It returned the last words

of those who rested beneath it.

Those who protected the earth,

and were protected by it.

Today, Gaza wears her grief

like an ancient dress.

And the land whispers:

They were never buried beneath me.

They were planted.

And I will remember their names.

Author’s note: The poem was inspired by the funeral held today for 112 members of the Abu Sharia family in Gaza, whose remains were recovered from beneath the rubble more than two years after they were killed. 308 members of the family were killed, while the remains of only 112 have been recovered. They were my neighbors, and I knew many of them personally.

Ahmed Dremly is a journalist from Gaza whose writings have appeared in Middle East Eye, Mondoweiss, The Electronic Intifada, The Intercept, Al-Monitor, and other publications. He is currently studying in Italy after leaving Gaza in May 2026.

AFTER THE LATEST IMMIGRATION RAIDS IN LOS ANGELES

by Carrie Farrar

 

Thousands of people rallied at MacArthur Park in Los Angeles on Friday [May 1] calling for legal protections and citizenship for immigrants and dignity for all workers. Janitors, stadium workers, car wash workers and educators stood shoulder-to-shoulder Friday with students, faith leaders and other community members for the annual May Day event, which is also celebrated around the world as International Workers’ Day. More than 125 pro-immigrant and social justice organizations mobilized their members under the banner “Solo el Pueblo Shuts it Down – No Work, No School, No Shopping,” according to a press release by the LA May Day Coalition. Photo by Martín Macías, Jr. —Los Angeles Public Press

They came as Michoacán, Jalisco, & Oaxaca,
feet tuned to rhythms of banda & norteño.
They came to roof houses in Inglewood & Watts,

to pick strawberries near Oxnard, to bus tables
on Figueroa, to fix rebar & copper in Compton,
to patch asphalt along Florence & Avalon.

They built drywall & scaffold
wedged into their place in South Central.
Decades of smog changed the skyline,

from oil pumps to cranes, & dream-footed
hard work rattled their bones.
They danced Zapateado. They lived

& died. Shrouded in flags, in unmarked graves,
in deportation vans idling at dawn again,
the headline already scrolling beneath the weather.

ICE owned them in neighborhoods of fear,
in alleys of Pico-Union where whispers
outlasted the sirens,

where this week’s footage loops
hands zip-tied outside a parking lot
no one will name twice.

Before developers arrived, bougainvillea
crept over chain-link & memory,
the scent of carne asada mixing
with jet fuel from LAX.

Did descendants & newcomers shoulder
the same dread, hauling drywall,
eyes darting at the low hum of drones?

Soon, footsteps of downtown’s marble lobbies
strutted overhead, back & forth
between old denials & new arrivals,

going from major to minor violence,
always on the go. The knock of boots,
the tap of a badge awaking the dead.

 

Carrie Farrar is a Los Angeles–based poet whose work explores labor, displacement, and the emotional architecture of survival. Her poems have appeared in several online literary journals.

AGAINST PURIM

by Barbara Ungar

ID 67399384 © Olga Kuevda | Dreamstime.com

Parading as Queen Esther in kindergarten

at my first carnival, in her long blue dress, 

I tripped and tumbled off the low stage.

Yet I teach my son the fairy tale:

Queen Esther was a secret Jew, raised 

by cousin Mordecai, who refuses 

to bow down to Haman, who’s convinced the king 

to kill all the Jews, so Esther risks her life 

to reveal herself and plead. The king relents, 

asks what to do to Haman. Mordecai says, 

whatever Haman says to do to me. Haman says 

hang Mordecai, so the king hangs Haman instead. 

We rejoice: They tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat 

hamantaschen, tarts shaped like Haman’s hat.

Bored at my son’s Purim carnival 

while his class intones Hebrew verses 

no one understands, and the teachers mug 

their way through the tale in drag, I read 

the whole Megilla, realize this was Persia

(Iran), Esther was in a harem, and Haman

wasn’t hanged, but impaled on a fifty-foot stake.

As the kids trip, one by one, to the front

to chant if they can, or just read the Hebrew

with no vowels, or blush and break down

in tears, I read, yes, Haman did plan

to impale Mordecai (so it’s a grisly take 

on the golden rule), but then they impale 

all ten of Haman’s sons. At every mention 

of Haman, everyone goes wild, twirling their noise-

making groggers and shrieking with laughter.

The besotted king gives Mordecai power so, 

the text crows, our hero slaughters 75,000 

of his foes in the city, and who knows

how many more in the countryside? This

we are enjoined to celebrate as Purim.

Party on. A vendetta thousands of years old.

Today, on Purim, I see photos of rows 

and rows of graves dug side by side for  

160 schoolgirls, and a video of an Iranian 

man in tears, holding the hand of a six- or 

seven-year-old girl, just the hand, all that’s left

of her. Of course we’ll pay in kind.

While the US vows vengeance for its seven 

(so far) dead, Jew-hatred blooms across the world-

wide web, and for every murdered child, 

how many will avenge? 

Barbara Ungar is the author of six books, most recently After Naming the Animals. Honors include the Snyder Prize from Ashland Poetry Press, Gival Poetry Prize, and being named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best Indie Books of 2015 and 2019. She has published poems in Scientific American, Rattle, Southern Indiana Review, and many other journals.