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. 

DISPATCH FROM GAZA, JUNE 2025

by Carolyn Martin

With thanks to Yasser Abu Rida

Maria

From inside a desert tent––how I do not know––
he posts comments on my Facebook page.
“Lovely”: the Easter lilies bursting in my yard.
“Always creative”: his response to my latest poetry.
 
While I sit in the luxury of blossoms and words,
he messages me Khuza’a, his village, is gone.
What’s left: a wife, three kids, and the courage to survive.
“Endless displacements”: he calls his current address
and “Like zombies,” he says, “who don’t look 
left or right, people run toward flour trucks.”
Famine weakens hope.
 
Yet, he asks me to celebrate Maria’s birthday.
“Two,” he wrote, “and she has never seen
anything beautiful in this world.”
I ask him to give her a kiss and show her 
that Easter lilies exist somewhere 
on this tattered Earth.

 

Carolyn Martin is blissfully retired in Clackamas, OR, where she gardens, writes, and plays with creative friends. Her poems have appeared in more than 200 publications around the world.

DISPATCH FROM GAZA

by Carolyn Martin

Palestinians make long trek back to their demolished homes in Gaza —USA Today, January 28, 2025. Photo by Mahmoud Issa (Reuters via USA Today)

The father writes he’s home again 
with wife and three kids.
Ceilings, walls, and floors still here, he says.
Our souls were kept safe.
The garden is green, he says: 
a color gone from their eyes for years
and his three-year-old is confused.
She falls on stone pathways and, rising up,
can’t find sand to brush away. 
His sons lie in bed at night 
where ceilings block stars
in the cloud-curated sky. 
He asks them if they’re afraid.
They dig up bravery and ask,
Our tent. When are we going back?
After their lifetime away, the father wonders,
How will I ever teach children of war
to live in a house again?

Author's Note: This poem is based on a message I just received from a contact in Gaza.

Carolyn Martin is a recovering work addict who’s adopted the Spanish proverb, “It is beautiful to do nothing and rest afterwards” as her daily mantra. She is blissfully retired––and resting––in Clackamas, Oregon. Her poems have appeared in more than 200 publications throughout North America, Europe, and Australia.

SENATOR UNINFORMED

by Indran Amirthanayagam

A U.S. senator calls 

the tents set up 

at universities

camps for Hamas;

and he says

he supports Israel

and if Hamas 

surrenders

and hostages

are released

the war will end.

He adds 

that he is 

deeply 

disappointed

that the President

has paused

some shipments

of heavy weapons

to Israel. Deeply 

disappointed

Senator 

Fetterman?

That is how 

I feel as well 

about you. 

Your ignorance

resounds. This

is not  binary.

Instead 

of pledging 

allegiance to Israel

come what may,

why don’t you 

in turn bow 

to the Palestinian

right of return

to homes from which 

they have been  

expelled since 1948? 

Why don’t you cite 

the ever smaller

wedge of Palestinian 

land, about twenty 

percent of what 

was assigned

to them in 1948?

Can you manage

to turn your head

around that fact?

Twenty percent?. 

One fifth of 

a shrinking pie?

And you say,

hard disagree

deeply disappointed.

Mr. Fetterman

pitch your tent

in Gaza. Wait

for food 

to be dropped

from the sky

Run and hide

when bombs

fall down 

instead.

Indran Amirthanayagam is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Mad Hat Press has just published his love song to Haiti: Powèt Nan Pò A (Poet of the Port). Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is a collection of Indran's poems. Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun. (Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

VANDALISM AT A MILITARY CEMETERY

by Janice D. Soderling

Dozens of Commonwealth graves have been daubed with swastikas and other symbols at a cemetery dedicated to those fought in the first and second world wars. The headstones were vandalised with red spray paint overnight at the Haifa war cemetery in northern Israel, according to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC). It comes just days after several other Commonwealth graves were knocked over at Belfast City Cemetery in Northern Ireland. —The London Economic, October 11, 2019

Indifferent to the clangor at their tent,
the dusty lads sleep on.
Allied in unilateral descent,
indifferent to the clangor at their tent,
and to the tiffs of kings or president.
Unmindful of thick darkness and bright dawn,
indifferent to the clangor at their tent
the dusty lads sleep on.

Janice D. Soderling, poet, writer and translator, is a previous contributor to TheNewVerse.News. Her work in Spanish translation was recent at La libélula vaga and her own translations from Swedish to English are forthcoming at Better than Starbucks.

SEARCHING WORDS FOR IT

by Cally Conan-Davies

Getty image via DW.

English. It isn’t all Greek. But a lot of it is,
maybe 60%, or more in the sciences.
But let’s not put a figure on it. Today
I’m thinking about the word ‘ecology’.
Basically, it’s your house, oikos. Unfortunately,
if that gets bombed, and you have to move away,

and there may not be a mother or a father or a door
about which a mother or father might say
‘were you born in a tent?’
to shame you every time you forget to shut it,
you must strive, especially when your new tongue is unstable,
to explain how your life is a ‘very high degree of miserable’
now that you shave the hair of your child for nits,
the child by the wire fence too tired to cry,
now that you wait and live in mud and shit
and the cold, quiet child is innocent,
and the settled world you seek is unsettling.


Cally Conan-Davies is a writer who lives by the sea.