Nancy Bevilaqua's Blog - Posts Tagged "gaza"

Today's poem is about the children killed on the beach in Gaza. It's unusual that I write poems like this, but I felt compelled in this case.

http://tupelopress.wordpress.com/3030...

This one is something of a follow-up to yesterday's poem about the four children killed on the beach in Gaza.

http://tupelopress.wordpress.com/3030...

I did it. Thirty poems in thirty days. I have to say that I'm kind of proud of myself; to be honest, I wasn't absolutely I'd be able to do it. Now I'll have some leisure to go back and see what it is that I've actually written over the last month...

Here's my final poem for the project:

TUPELO PRESS 30/30—Day 30
Nancy Bevilaqua

Useless Sonnet for Gaza

Rest in pools at brink of Sunday. It’s out
of frame, the network of indignities:
curbs where frightened mothers sit, blinded city’s
quail, scattered children quiet, open-mouthed.
(They ate the wrong religion.) Room for doubt:
scenes can be erased (news about the mercies)
in open season. (See--they don’t want peace.)
Prayer broken by the better beast. Allowed.
Weight of all the shoes they left outside. Weight
of skin returned to dust a thousand times.
Weight of metal, wire. Weight of broken stone.
Weight of indifference: it is too late.

Hot here. Quiet. I offer you these lines.
(Hard to hear them when the flesh betrays the bone.)

My poem "Blackouts (Dog Days, 2014)", which I wrote in August as all hell broke loose in Gaza, Ferguson, and elsewhere, went up today in the new issue of MadHat Lit. They've also redesigned the site, and it all looks gorgeous. Have a look:

http://madhatlit.com/blackouts-dog-da...