Boutaina’s Reviews > Forest of Noise: Poems > Status Update

"Sir, we have no airports and seaports;
no trains, or highways.
We have no passable roads, sir!
We do have crutches and wheelchairs.
Young men with one or no legs,
no longer able to work, as if there was work."

At fifth grade, I visit the school library.
On a wall by the door, a poster claims,
“If you read books, you live more than one life.”
Now I’m thirty and whenever I look at faces
around me, old or young, on each forehead I read:
“If you live in Gaza,    you die several times.”