RED LINE

by Lynn White

Thousands circle White House to demand Biden enforce Gaza “red line.” Demonstrators said that if President Biden would not draw a “red line” after Israeli forces began an assault on Rafah, they would draw the red line for him. —The Washington Post, June 8, 2024

It was thin at first,

the line of blood

hardly a trickle

easily crossed

though visibly

to those paying attention.

But with each crossing it widened

a stream bleeding out into a river

and then a sea

bleeding out

from the river to the sea

stronger and stronger

wider and wider

every crossing

widening it.

Making a line that can never be crossed

however many times it is crossed

its crossing becomes impossible.

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.

RIVER OF RHETORIC

by Felicia Nimue Ackerman

Cartoon by Mira Scharf, The Times of Israel

In its own words, the founding principle of the Netanyahu coalition is that “the Jewish people has an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of Eretz Yisrael” — Eretz Yisrael is a Hebrew term referring to the entire territory between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. The Netanyahu coalition envisions a single state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, which would grant full rights only to Jewish citizens, partial rights to a limited number of Palestinian citizens and neither citizenship nor any rights to millions of oppressed Palestinian subjects. —The Washington Post, May 13, 2024

"From the river to the sea,"

Bibi says, "It's all for me.

If you've got opposing views, 

I'll just say you hate the Jews."

Felicia Nimue Ackerman is a professor of philosophy at Brown University and has had over 280 poems in places including American Atheist, The American Scholar, Better Than Starbucks, The Boston Globe, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Down in the Dirt, The Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin, Free Inquiry, The Galway Review, Light Poetry Magazine, Lighten Up Online, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Options (Rhode Island's LGBTQ+ magazine), The Providence Journal, Scientific American, Sparks of Calliope, Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and Your Daily Poem. She has also had four previous poems in The New Verse News.