New 'zine! Raza for Gaza : Poets in solidarity with Palestine

To mark a two-night gathering of community with poets and musicians to express solidarity with the Palestinian people under siege in Gaza, the EastSide Arts Alliance with editorial Xingao published a lightning 'zine Raza for Gaza Poets in Solidarity with Palestine, featuring nine poets from across the world, as part of the "Raza con Gaza | Raza for Gaza" solidarity and justice movement culture celebration at the Eastside Arts Center in Oakland,  February 23-24, 2024.

Eastside invited people to make a generous as possible donation to either the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, the Middle East Children's Alliance for Peace or the Electronic Intifada and take a copy of the 'zine home. As City of Oakland Poet Laureate declared at the "Raza con Gaza | Raza for Gaza" gathering, 'This is a unique publication that you cannot buy tonight or anywhere else. Raza for Gaza is not for sale and you can get a copy when you support the organizations doing the work.'

The two-night gathering at the Eastside Arts Center featured three poets and three musical groups each evening. Poets Ayodele Nzinga, Mo Sati, Lubna Morrar and Leticia García and musicians Camellia Boutros, AntiFaSon, Diana Gameros, and the Duo Made y Feña with special guest Daniel Oñate, graced each evening with joyous sounds, passionate verses and heartfelt lyrics acknowledging the grim reality and resilient spirit of resistance of Palestinians under the Israeli genocidal siege of Gaza and occupied Palestine territory.

Raza con Gaza | Raza for Gaza Snapshots at the Eastside Arts Center

Here are some images of the two nights at Eastside Arts Center in Oakland (see bios of each performer at end of post).

AntiFaSon

Ayodele Nzinga performing two poems published in the'zine

Lubna Morrar, poet.

Duo Made y Feña with special guest Daniel Oñate 

Diana Gameros.

Camelia Boutros & band.

Mo Sati, poet.

Leticia García, poeta.

Diana Gameros & Camellia Boutros.

BIOS OF THE POETS & MUSICIANS

AntiFaSon is a Son Jarocho project, a musical guest on Ohlone territory (aka Oakland). They amplify anti-capitalist, anti-colonial, anti-fascist and anti-extractivist feminist themes in Son Jarocho songs that form part of the larger history of Afro-Indigenous land, water and campesinx struggles. 

For more info visit their Instagram page: @somosantifason

Camellia Boutros is a Palestinian-Lebanese American composer and multi-instrumentalist based in San Francisco. Having performed as a trumpet player with a diverse array of Bay Area world music projects, such as Mission Delirium, Alaturca Connection, Inspector Gadje, and Banda Sin Nombre, Camellia approaches the music she writes with a custom modified fretless 12-string electric guitar, enabling her to write and perform music using the quarter-tone Maqam system. Her music and lyrics defy genre definition, forming an experimental blend of rock, folk, Arab, jazz, and brass music, all of which can be found on her first solo album Refuge.

For more info: Camellia Boutros Music https://camelliaboutros.com/about/

Diana Gameros is a singer, guitarist, pianist, composer, songwriter, music instructor and social justice activist, based in San Francisco, California. She was born and raised in Ciudad Juárez, México and immigrated to the United States as a teenager to study music in Michigan. Over the last decade in the Bay Area she has released two albums of original songs written in Spanish and English, and Mexican classic songs. In 2014 Diana received the Emerging Leader Award by the Chicana/Latina Foundation. In 2015 she was named one of YBCA’s 100: creative minds, makers, and pioneers that are asking the questions  and making the provocations that will shape the future of American culture. NPR Music gave Diana an honorable mention to Arrullo in best Latin albums of the year in 2017. Diana was named one of SF Magazine’s 100 Artists: Artists Putting The East Bay On The Map, in 2018.

For more info: https://www.dianagameros.com/epk

Leticia García is a poet and an immigrant woman from Oaxaca, Mexico, a single mother and a powerful leader in the community, with deep compassion for the suffering of other immigrant women.

To learn more about Leticia, visit Mujeres Unidas y Activas: https://mujeresunidas.net

Lubna Morrar Palestinian, born and raised in The Town aka Oakland,CA. Long time Community organizer, business owner, artist... and sometimes a poet.

Ayodele Nzinga, the first Poet Laureate of Oakland, is a multi-hyphenated artist; a brilliant actress, a producing director, playwright, poet, dramaturg, performance consultant, educator, and community advocate. She is the director of the Lower Bottom Playaz, Inc., Oakland’s oldest North American African Theater Company and founder of Lower Bottom Playaz Summer Theater Day Camp. Ayodele is co-founder of Janga’s House a Black Women Arts collective and a founding member of BlacSpace Collective. She is the Executive Director of the Black Arts Movement Business District Community Development Corporation (BAMBD CDC); and founder and producer of BAMBDFEST International Biennial, a month-long arts and cultural festival animating the Black Arts Movement Business District in Oakland CA. Nzinga holds an MFA in Writing and Consciousness; a Ph.D. in Transformative Education & Change; is a Cal-Shakes Artist Investigator Alumni; a San Francisco Foundation Arts Leadership Fellow; a member of the Alameda County Women’s Hall of Fame; recognized by Theater Bay Area as one of the 40 faces in the Bay that changed the face of theater in the Bay Area; is recognized by the August Wilson House as the only director in the world to direct the complete August Wilson American Century Cycle in chronological order; a YBCA 10 Fellow, a BIPOC Circle Fellow and a VOICES Community Journalism Fellow. Nzinga is the inaugural Poet Laureate of Oakland CA. Nzinga’s work for the stage has been reviewed internationally. Her blog is read in 81 countries. She is the author of Performing Literacy a Narrative Inquiry into Performance Pedagogy, The Horse Eaters, SorrowLand Oracle, and Incandescent and her work can be found in numerous journals and anthologies. Nzinga, a cultural anchor, is part theoretician and part partitioner. She describes herself as a cultural architect invested in creating structures for culture making.

For more info: Ayodele Nznga https://www.ayodelenzinga.com/about/

Mo Sati was born in Palestine, grew up in a refugee camp in Jordan, and now lives in Oakland. Mo is a poet, a writer, a playwright, and an artist. He participates in activist and cultural events nationally and internationally sharing insights about life as a refugee uprooted from his homeland. His poetry, writings, and artworks tell stories of the people of Palestine living under occupation. His work personifies emotions drawn from the day-to-day struggles of resistance to oppression as Palestinians fight to unshackle themselves from decades of military occupation. Listen to Mo Sati perform: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpHLn0aL9Ks

Duo Made y Feña with special guest Daniel Oñate: Multi-instrumentalist composer and writer Fernando Torres and multi-faceted Puertorrican singer /interpreter and political activist Madeleine Zayas. Their eclectic repertoire is rooted in the Nueva Canción/Nueva Trova tradition of entertaining and educating about culture and pressing social issues.

Madeleine Zayas Born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Madeleine Zayas is a Latin American singer/interpreter, dancer and choreographer and architect based in Oakland. She was co-founder of Buena Trova Social Club in 2012 and lead singer and co-artistic director of Madelina y Los Carpinteros since 2014. Madeleine has performed in San Juan, Puerto Rico, many U.S. Cities, and Santiago, Chile, and has shared stage with Wilkins, Cheo Feliciano, Inti Illimani, John Santos and Holly Near. She believes in art and cultural activism as a positive force of communication and a tool for social change.

Fernando Feña Torres is a Chilean exile, musician, composer and poet, journalist and founding ex member of Grupo Raiz. Fena is an expert in folkloric multi-instrumentalist. He began his musical career as a young boy inspired by the socialist government of Salvador Allende  A former political prisoner and exiled into the US, he has collaborated with Teatro Campesino and has performed in Bay Area and internationally along with artists such as David Byrne, Pete Seeger and Holly Near.

Daniel Oñate, is a highly qualified performer of piano, pianist, transverse flute and quena. He is also a composer, arranger and orchestra director from Southern Chile. He is a winner of the acclaimed Luis Advis contest, in the Chile Canta a Victor Jara version. He is currently completing a Masters in music at UC Berkeley.

Listen to Made y Feña's new song for Gaza in Would You

AND Madeleine Zayas in a live performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j5JOiLPVfM

my status is Palestine

My status is Palestine
There are no walls between our lands, our skins, our hearts
Palestine is the horizon of humanity
I am Palestine
I am nomad on the longest walk to return to her
Palestine: either we are all free or we are all fucked.
Hold my hand
Hold my body
Hold my head
Hold my tears
From your bed to the workplace
From the long-distance phone calls to your voice
Hold me Palestine
Her first name is love
Her last name is peace
She will hold me
For she is Palestine
The land is Palestine
The sea is Palestine
The sky is Palestine
The moon is Palestine
The sun is Palestine
And
wherever I stand
wherever I dream
wherever I cry
wherever I love
wherever I live and die
Palestine

My status, write it down, is Palestine ...

ABC's Palestine Free Free Free!

Amantes Yes

apartheid no
Beauty Yes
border walls no
Collective Tenderness Yes
collective punishment no
Democracy Yes
dictatorship no
Equality Yes
expulsions no
Freedom yes
fascism no
Gaza Yes
garrisons no
Hugs Yes
hate no
Intifada Yes
identity cards no
Justice Yes
jackals no
Keffiyehs Yes
kkkisraelis no
Land Yes
landlords no
Mohammed Abu Khudeir Yes
military murderer-monsters no
Nectar Yes
nakba no
Orgasms Yes
occupation no
Palestine Yes
police-state no
Qasidas Yes
qualudes no
Return Yes
racism no
Solidarity soul Yes
settlers no
Tierra أرض Yes
takers no
Uprisings Yes
Untrammeled people Yes
Victory Yes
victims no
Water Yes
weapons no
X of the heart Yes
x of the barbed-wire no
Yearning Yes
Y of the arms open to embraces Yes

Y of the Palestinian flag fluttering in my veins Yes
Zhrah Yes
Zatoon Yes
Zahra Yes
Palestine free yes...

Recipe for a new humanity

How to cook a Mexican-American [1994]

First, pre-heat oven at slightly over five-hundred years.

Second, destroy languages, monolingualize, monoculturize, monocropize,

harangue the people who speak them,

erase the lands they named,

give them names from other lands,

force them to flee,

make them forget their history my any means necessary,

make them speak languages which don't respect the lands,

make them die surviving,

make them believe they are ugly, everything they stand for,

every syllable, consonant,

every gesture,

the rough-hewn hands, their wrinkled hearts,

their ancient lungs,

the wind they create,

every iota of their ugly being,

steal their foods, seeds and soil and call them yours,

steal their finest words and call them yours,

steal their dances that stamp the dust into the sun and call them yours,

steal their music and call it heinous, heathen, devil-inspired,

burn their corn, their flowers and songs,

make them

forget how to treat their dead,

forget how to treat their elders,

forget how to treat the young,

forget how to treat the lovers,

make their sacred profane, their profane sacred,

the flight and wind of birds go north instead of south,

divide up life into hours, hours into money, money into life.

(If you cannot get fresh, unspoiled peoples, you can use the colonized as a substitute. Taste will be a little more historically stale than original recipe.)

Third, bring some dirt from the valley.

Pour into the water you erin.

Walk many miles to work.

Be too tired to rest, dream or be passionate.

Now you are ready to begin mixing the ingredients:

Gather:

1 Palestinian worker

1 Indigenous woman (origin unknown)

1 Yemini woman

1 Purépecha family

1 mestizo, like yourself, but one who is a fervent Catholic (they are called by various names: half-breed, mixed blood, mongrel, mud people, greaser, indio, wetback, illegal alien, immigrant).

They must all be landless and in some state of statelessness, homelandlessness, but not lost.

Tenderize by deliberately dragging them across oceans, suffering wars, disease, death of families, villages razed, make them work miserably in the fields and deny who they are to avoid problems.

Set aside for at least five generations.

You will also need:

English

Spanish

Arabic

Stunted purépecha sprinkled with swahili, nahuatl, pocho and German

No more than two years of formal education

Alcoholism, perfect pitch, ability to work long hours and withstand lynchings

Awe for nature, migrant campus, being stopped constantly by bosses, police and other state agents, harassed by landlords or anyone else who thinks they have more power than you or actually have more power or they're of lighter skin.

Make sure at least half, if not more, of the ingredients are women folk or else the taste will not be as bitter.

NOTE For a delicious variation of this recipe also add any of the following:

The Texas Rangers

borders and border patrols

greedy contratistas

greedier landowners

"No dogs or Mexicans allowed" signs

Teachers who beat anything that moves like a Mexican

Offspring that are kicked out of schools between the third and sixth grade and are made to work in the fields and aspire to nothing else.

Now, bring back the main ingredients when they have two children, name them Manuela and José.

Manuela is the perfect blend of mestiza. She is a curandera, a priestess who baptizes illegitimate children, knows the Bible backward and forward, knows plants, herbs, seeds, knows how to cook at least fifty dishes without measuring anything once, can hear tomatoes, chiles, frijoles, green beans, avocados, onions (any plant she cooks) sing on her comal (griddle), cooked all meals, worked full-time in the fields, took care of her own children, grandchildren, neighbors' children, would use our innocence to fight evil, ward off storms, nuclear holocausts, hurricanes and lightning storms with her chants, prayers and knives while we kneeled in prayer, cure newborn'smoyeras, massaged away any pain stomach ache, fever; she would absorb all the dangers her sons and daughters faced on any night out at work or at play meditating for hours on end. She hardly slept; would go outside very night to pray in the still of star-filled skies; she would always remind us not to be afraid of ghosts, the dead, spirits when she was outside in the dark but be very afraid of living persons who could harm us. No one could lie to her; her eyes would make you stutter, weaken your knees. She always forgave, always loved; was a master of discipline. she had twelve children (six girls/six boys); took care of animals, constantly nursed birds, gave water and planted nectar for hummingbirds. In the fields, snakes would always appear in her row. She would shriek then laugh at her own surprise while the rest opus would jump up and away in fear. She has a man's name because her mother lost all her female children except the last five when she gave them men's name to fool death. From this she learned to name things by their names. She knew that one's name was the heart of culture and life, the blood of gods and goddesses and without your real name you would die before your time. When she dies she promises to come back, appear and give us guidance only in the dreariest of times; and she keeps her word.

José is an indio, an Indian, who has lost everything except being an Indio: A purépecha, cultured, cuadri-lingual (spoke purépecha, Spanish, later English; and then created a language with a landowner who only spoke what we believe was German -- because we knew it was not Engish -- and because he taught the landowner how to take care of the land he was rewarded a job).

José begins working in the the fields at five years old, he has the duty of burying the dead of his community during one of the many epidemics that hit his people in the mountains. His family is decimated; with his father he becomes part of the displaced indigenous communities forced into indentured servitude becoming farmworkers or like the Chinese in the U.S., forced into mining and building the railroad lines that run north into the U.S.

With his father, they reach the border and work in the U.S. several years. José is undocumented, illegal, Indio, witnesses wars and revolutions, lynchings, works every single day of his life, helps build churches wherever he lived in communities, knows how the plants grow, how the land is alive, how much tilling, how much walking among the plants is needed before the harvest is ready, knows how to live anywhere, find work anywhere, knows how to find any field in the middle of nowhere at four o'clock in the morning darkness, never complained abut anything only about not having enough time to be with us and he always lets us sleep as long as possible even though he gets up hours ahead to prepare the meals, the tools and pray for the day light. Patience, tranquility, meditation with a rosary every night counting the stars as his beads; he works every day until he dies in a field in the Lomas Coloradas, dies a painful death caused by pesticide poisoning.

NOW MIX these together while traditions and their peoples are being ravaged:

He's almost 25, she's 14. They are married for mutual life: everyone around them is dying from famines, war posing as revolution, pestilence. There is no one his age; she's married off to him so that her mother and sisters can hope to survive.

Bring to a boil and simmer for fifty years. Make sure the offspring number twelve before turning off the heat.

Serves to feed at least five constellations of families living in two different countries, five different regions, speaking in tongues, with varying degrees of recognition and monolingualism: U.S. citizens, Mexicans, Hispanics, indio coffee with varying mixtures of milk, sugar, cinnamon and fatigue, undocumented, pasaporteados, southern accents, tejanos, dispersed North and South, midwest, northwest, southwest, migrants all...

[1994 | El Presidio, San Francisco]

Arnoldo García
April 10-15

NOTES

Reading poetry: an act of self-determination, self-emancipation

Mini-reviews of
A River Dies of Thirst and Absence Presence by Mahmoud Darwish
A life of reinvention: Malcolm X by Manning Marable

We are all Palestine.

Mahmoud Darwish is one of Palestine's most preeminent poets. Starting out as a national liberation poet, Darwish came under Israeli security surveillance before he was even ten years old. Darwish's writings transformed Paletine's national liberation movement and struggle into a natural human liberation movement, a universal call for humanity wherever she is found and for a place to be Palestinian, for Palestine. Palestine and her people's freedom cause transformed Mahmoud Darwish, from a child-poet to a consciousness, a word-producer, an image instigator, a revolution in human consciousness, to becoming an elder of humanity -- because he spoke out, lived, wrote, imagined, protested, organized in poetry and in action, for the Palestinian cause.

Mahmoud Darwish passed away in 2008 after a heart operation in Texas. Born in 1941, his family and community lived through the "great catastrophe," the "Nakba." His family snuck back into their country and became "present absent," i.e. strangers in their own lands. For a mexicano-chicano with purépecha roots, this is the condition of all Indigenous people -- strangers in our own lands.

The conditions & life of Palestinians parallels that of Indigenous people and so-called "immigrants" (people of color and Indigenous peoples born outside the " U.S.") in the U.S. Undocumented workers and other peoples, derogatorily called "illegals," are "present absent." We have been treated as strangers in our lands. Immigrants, Indigenous peoples and Palestinians, literally, need a world revolution so that we can retake our rightful places on earth.

Darwish writes with a deep passion and multiple senses of beauty and peoplehood. In ten years, in a hundred years, Darwish's oeuvre will be mistaken as testament for the human condition. I fear that given the neo-liberal jaggernaut -- the ongoing attempt to privatize everything: rights, services, air, water, soil, DNA ... -- eventually all workers, people of color, queer, women, Indigenous people and other humans who don't speak English, humans without property, wealth, assets or the right birth certificate or passport will become strangers in their own world: present but not recognized, the illegals of the world.

Mahmoud Darwish writes the life of Palestine and her people's struggles for self-determination and land the life of anyone who has ever experienced displacement, invisibility, dehumanization. How can a "river die of thirst"?

Yet capitalist-drive consumption is driving humanity into the grave as the privatization of air, water, soil -- and even culture, identity, voice, human-ness -- literally dries up rivers and places eco-systems, species and human communities on the endangered and extinct lists.

Darwish draws out many contradictions of the human class and land battles for self-determination and people-hood in "A River Dies of Thirst." Like Absence Presence, his last work, this book of his journal entries is a canto and a letter to humanity, that human survival should not be based or result in the destruction of other humans; that human community cannot be made by destroying other human communities; that the destiny and survival of many nations and peoples across the world is intimately linked to Palestine's survival and return.

"A River Dies of Thirst" like Darwish's "Memory for Forgetfulness" needs to be read and re-read many times. Each time I pick up either of these two books a new insight a new voice a new book new words, new poems appears in his pages. A river dies of thirst, a poet dies for lack of land and his people dispersed across the globe, strangers in their lands, un-human in other countries. How will this story end?

That's the challenge we must take on -- to determine how the story of neoliberalism will end and how our story will begin. In the meantime, read Darwish, then organize and dream for the revolution to be human.

*

We are all Malcolm X.
The subtitle of Manning Marable's Malcolm X biography, A life of reinvention: Malcolm X, fits all our communities. Like Malcolm and because Malcolm is part of our communities, our communities have had to self-transform in the face of crushing exploitation and dispersions. We have had to re-invent ourselves to survive and thrive; yet, we cannot and will not forget who we are, where we came from, how we got here and where we need to go.

Malcolm X was first Malcolm Little, petty criminal, drug pusher and user, who didn't take kindly to work and women. By the time he becomes an adult he is imprisoned. Their he undergoes a spiritual transformation and becomes a member of the Nation of Islam, who eventually becomes the leading voice and messenger of the Honorable Elijah Mohammed -- a phrase he coined for showing respect and follow-ship for Mr. Mohammed -- to someone who is outcast again by the NOI and eventually pays the price with his life. This sounds easy enough, but once you read A life of reinvention: Malcolm X , this was never a foregone conclusion. Malcolm X lived and developed a new way of being principled, austere, ascetic, dedicated to the emancipation of his people. Every community and people has many examples of Malcolm X's in their midst: Emiliano Zapata, Indigenous revolutionary leader of Mexico, who through their vision and work foresaw a different outcome, a different people coming together, to make deep changes and a new history. Zapata like Malcolm X were killed in their prime.

Malcolm X changed because the people, his people, he saw as his base, his leadership, his force change. If Malcolm X had lived to old-age, we would have seen his people include African Americans and all the outcasts, the working class, the under-class, the undocumented, the Indigenous people robbed of their lands, women, LGBTQ. But this is just my speculation, my envisioning of the land he opened up for those who followed to cultivate and till.

Manning presents Malcolm X's chronology as one where in successive periods and turning points, forks in the road, Malcolm X made choices with a self-determined, iron will that makes him stand out. Malcolm became a new man, a new human, as a result of unforeseen ordeals. People of African descent in the U.S. have had to re-invent themselves from slavery to freedom, from racial segregation to racial integration, from underground spiritual struggles to overt organizing from the pulpit, for racial justice and communal liberation to self-determination. The struggle for freedom is also a struggle for identity. All politics -- whether it's Democrats, Republicans, Committees of Correspondence, Tea partiers, Indigenous, Hispanic, Xicano, Black, LGTBQ -- have identity

Malcom X's life and words model the best way to become the change you want to be. I have just begun reading, about 100 pages into the tome (4-12-11) and what comes through is that he was human, specifically a Black man in the U.S. growing up under harsh conditions created by racial segregation and a nascent movements for civil rights and Black self-determination.

Malcom X's story isn't over and keeps getting retold everyday: 60% of all prisoners in the U.S. are African American and Latinos. If Malcolm Little overcame the criminalization and branding and became Malcolm X then all our brothers and sisters can transform themselves too, re-invent themselves and our country, by bringing about new relationships between peoples, genders and classes based on mutuality, justice and human rights."

arno!do garcía

Your colonialism did this to me

Your skin did this to me

Your 99.9% dropless blood

Your redlining

Your redneck

Your monotone monolingual Christianity

Your tone-deaf tongue

Your flat-ass flat world

did this to me.

*

Notes for my Palestine war

Anwar Balousha

mourns his five daughters

killed by an Israeli Apache [sic]

helicopter that fired mssiles

at a mosque in Jabaliya

Anwar's house was destroyed

by the blasts

Four of his children escaped

Samar, six years old

Dina, seven years old

Jawaker, eight years ofld

Abram, 14

Tahnir, 17

were all crushed to death

where they slept

Five missiles

one for each daughter

Five daughters

one for each missile

five centuries

five Malinches

in the refugee camps

in the migrant camps

Israeli drones in the dark night

looking for their targets

using infrared television cameras

found the five sleeping beauties

five dreaming peace or love

or family or fast asleep resting

getting ready for the next day

But how do you get reay

for the next day of bombardments

of atrocities of F-16 jet fighter pilots

who destroy mosques,

homes, school, universities,

markets, killing and maiming

Palestinians?

Even the ruins are Palestinian.

*

Gaza,

all the missiles

all the bayonets

all the tanks

all the soldiers

all the armies

are hunting you

All they can do is give us time

to prepare for our turn at war

at the fountains of blood

where Israel is quenching

Palestine is rubble under the bombardments

crushed children crushed women

crushed men

who will continue resiting

as dust as ruins as slogans as martyrs

at our marches

as the ultimate dream of freedom

that can only be crushed

by an ignorant enemy

Nowhere to run or hide

what kind of satellite is needed

to hunt down a people

the tables are turned

Israel is driving Palestine

into the sea

and Palestine will become

the largest country in the world

Palestine Palestinian ocean

and you will have to be beg, ask permission on the knees of your ancestors and soul

for at least 500 years

to cross

to bathe

to swim

in our liquid nation

to enter into the realm of our catastrophic borders

the U.S. submarines will snk

the gunboats, the warships

the corporate petroleum pirates the nukes

will be grounded

Israel buries Palestin

and the Palestinians

grow roots an underground

seed that flowers

without dynamite strapped

to her waist

that furrows under and causes the occupation to cave in to sink

in the aquifers of our loud tender mouths

Israel makes Palestinians mourn, twists and maims

their bodies, blasts apart

children and measly armed men,

Israel believes he is winning

76% of the Israelies support the war

they lie, hate cannot be

measured by wars.

*

Oscar Gaza

Broken windows

over a man shot in the back

over a man unarmed

laying face down

with four cops on top of him

shot in the back

a case of a mistaken bullet?

But what color was this Gazan in East Oakland?

who breaks windows, burns cars

who shoots us in the back

who is guilty

who is free

where is Gaza

where is Oakland

where is your sea our ocean our country of open arms and caresses?

Note: these are poems 23 and 24 for April Poetry Month. I was unable to post the 23rd poem on April 23 because I was busy working with communities responding to the rising apartheid and Jim Crow segregation in Arizona, after AZ Governor Janet Brewer signed into law SB1070, which makes racial profiling and discrimination legal. SB1070 give police the power to question anyone they suspect of being undocumented and to investigate private and public agencies, employers if they are serving or hiring undocumented people. Take four actions for justice in Arizona and to denounce SB1070 here.]

Three Poets, Four Poems for Gaza

Note from Arnoldo Garcia, EL FEO: These poems were sent to me by Miriam Ching Yoon Louie, author of Sweatshop Warriors and co-author with Beth Ching and myself, Arnoldo Garcia, of XicKorea: poems rants words together.

These four poems denounce the Israeli war against Palestinians and Palestine in Gaza. There are two poems by Suheir Hammad, noted Palestinian poet; one by Miriam Ching Yoon Louie and Janine Mogannam.

Why must these poems be written, read, disseminated, memorized, exchanged, lived? Israel launched a military invasion of the Gaza Strip on December 27, 2008, a seige that continues to this date and with no end in sight. Over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed (a third or more of the casualties are women and children) and thousands more wounded, maimed and traumatized. Israeli F-16 jets are bombing Gaza cities and towns into rubble, tanks and soldiers follow with shells, mortar fire and weapons firing against the people, whether they are in mosques, schools, homes, apartments, U.N. buildings and schools. Israel is carrying out a massacre, with the deliberate intention of a holocaust. The carnage must stop; Israel must be disarmed and driven back, driven out. Gaza must live.

Here are three poets aiming their words, their only weapons, for peace, justice, for those who have been buried and are dying in Gaza under the rubble of Israel. What will last longer? The Israeli siege and destruction of Gaza? Palestine? These poems? Who will remember forever, who try to forget today the Israeli killings? If Gaza is destroyed, I will rename Oakland, Gaza. I will name my home Gaza, my mourning, my happiness, my migrancies, my displacements, my love, my tenderness -- all Gaza.

*}*{*

Miriam Ching Yoon Louie

GazaNam

White phosphorous means
Napalm means VietGaza means
Child aflame run Korea

Survive Holocaust/ how
Collective hungerment/ can you
Smell charred flesh again?

Scorched root still grows
Bay night luminous with kaffiyah moms
Hoarse chanting babies

Eyelash boys beat buk thunder
Drum witness big bros rippling Leila
Wings from bus shelter roofs

Red black green white prayer
Cape catches my drumstick—kung!
End—the occupation

Now—a lil bit louder
Stop—the genocide
Free—free Palestine!

Hope pray hope
March hope please hope means
Stop burning children want peace.

*}*{*

Suheir Hammad

gaza

a great miracle happened here
a festival of lights
a casting of lead upon children
an army feasting on epiphany

i know nothing under the sun over the wall no one mentions
some must die wrapped in floral petroleum blanket
no coverage

i have come to every day armageddon
a ladder left unattended
six candles burn down a house
a horse tied to smoke
some must die to send a signal

flat line scream live stream river a memory longer than life spans
the living want to die in their country

no open doors no open seas no open
hands full of heart five daughters wrapped in white

each day jihad
each day faith over fear
each day a mirror of fire
the living want to die with their families

the girl loses limbs her brother gathers arms
some must die for not dying

children on hospital floor mother beside
them the father in shock this is my family
i have failed them this is my family i did
not raise their heads i have buried them
my family what will i do now my family is bread
one fish one people cut into pieces

there is a thirst thefts life
there is a hunger a winter within winter

some must die to bring salvation
i have come to end times always present

the woman lost parents her children and screams
my sister i have lost my sister i want to die
my sister’s eyes were honey her voice mine
i can’t face this only god only god my sister

medics killed schools hit convoys bombed
the injured are dying the dead are buried in three
hours the people pray together and curse the people
mourn loud and quiet always too loud not enough

some must die because they are the vicinity
some must die because it was written

no army does not apologize has never
apologized authority chases paper assembly
occupation settles deeper

a great miracle here
the living are dying and the dying living

a festival of lights
a strip a land a blaze
the sea a mirror of fire

a casting of lead upon children
their heads roll off their shoulders into streets
their tops spin in hands

an army feasting on epiphany
driving future into history
carrying torches into women


*}*{*

Janine Mogannam

for gaza

ya allah what
is there is anything
left

allahuakbar

scream cold into cobalt darkness
frigid breath cannot temper
the fury of earth betrayed
ablaze her children only human
orphaned to her now

land of ghosts hollow
cost of growing up cactus
fruit people knew
what the war
saw replanted advantage over
wheat and olive
people always without

i know that cool midnight
sky navy royal
purple alight by
stars struck the gash
of rockets mortar fire
and brimstone paradise
lost children and limbs
reaching for home phantom
fragment gory spilling
insides endless vultures
circling for the kill

the city
in shambles city
of the dead gaza
a graveyard tumbled
walls are tombstones
marking graves anonymous
babies mothers scream
into the sunlight i
can't believe
in the sky anymore

but the light
persists waiting to be
found the sun
still rises in gaza nablus jenin
haifa ramallah bethlehem points
in between stars
still twinkle unknown
signs in three
languages point nowhere
into the trees or into
the sea the river rebirth
its children false witness
history rewritten
so that every town bears
a different name
a different scar slashed
swift and sweet into
the skin of this land

bring me to her break
my heart in two
bury it half
here half within me
so i always feel
her pain always
remember fortune born
on the right end
of the flat earth
as i return
in my mind faces
at qalandia expressions
cannot be translated
into words eyes
wide as the moon or
fallen trees lips parched
feet cracked and
aching to return
to remain
still and i am speechless
with sorrow with guilt pushing
away the sesame jerusalem loaves
warming my lap there is
no bread enough
to feed those eyes
those feet these memories
these horrors push
bodies push away my hand my chair
away from the table the television terror
i remember i cannot DO anything
push away palestine push

make use
shoot
my arrow at the stars
make light rain onto her
rebuild
take the pebbles splinters
shrapnel (once home)
mix with water
mix with blood mix
until hands are crimson
and raw as hearts as insides
laid bare and open flesh
wounded against rocks feeding
the soil
the rage feeding
another day
rebuild
rebuild

*}*{*

Suheir Hammad

jabaliya

a woman wears a bell carries a light calls searches
through madness of deir yessin calls for rafah for bread
orange peel under nails blue glass under feet gathers
children in zeitoun sitting with dead mothers she unearths
tunnels and buries sun onto trauma a score and a day rings
a bell she is dizzy more than yesterday less than
tomorrow a zig zag back dawaiyma back humming suba

back shatilla back ramleh back jenin back il khalil back il quds
all of it all underground in ancestral chests she rings
a bell promising something she can’t see faith is that
faith is this all over the land under the belly
of wind she perfumed the love of a burning sea

concentrating refugee camp
crescent targeted red

a girl’s charred cold face dog eaten body
angels rounded into lock down shelled injured shock

weapons for advancing armies clearing forests sprayed onto a city
o sage tree human skin contact explosion these are our children

she chimes through nablus back yaffa backs shot under
spotlight phosphorous murdered libeled public relations

public

relation

a bell fired in jericho rings through blasted windows a woman
carries bones in bags under eyes disbelieving becoming
numb dumbed by numbers front and back gaza onto gaza
for gaza am sorry gaza am sorry she sings for the whole
powerless world her notes pitch perfect the bell a death toll

*}*{*