Rachel’s Song
by KEMMER ANDERSON
for Rachel Corrie
A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and lamenting,
Rachel weeping for her children
And refusing to be comforted because they are no more. (Matthew 2:18)
In Rafah the sound of weeping voices cries out:
Soldiers arrive rolling great stones
Turning homes into rubble, houses into tombs,
Words into perpetual acts of burial and deceit.
Bulldozers invade; tank tracks clack across artifacts,
Narratives, football pitch, and orchard –
leveling the playing between rocks and rockets,
Imprinting the genetic code for massacre through a generation.
of warring brothers.
The Herod engines of blind Samsons
Drive bladed bulldozers through a slaughter of innocents.
Your crushed body rises in lament for Palestine:
Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted
Because they are no more. Rachel kneeling before the Army
In her orange jacket speaks against occupation.
Swallowed up by dirt and bulldozer, shoveled aside by force,
Flattened ribs and crushed skull break the peace.
Tank tracks pass over your body.
A voice is heard in Rafah and Ramah weeping and lamenting,
Rachel weeping for her children
And refusing to be comforted because they are no more.
(Previously published online at Poets Against the War. On August 28, Haifa District Court Judge Oded Gershon ruled in effect that Rachel Corrie, herself, was to blame for being murdered by Israeli forces.)
Kemmer Anderson may be reached at kanderso@mccallie.org.
EVOL
by SUSAN ADAMS
Authorised war is the muse
its oil pulse
and forgiving heavens
mock our growth.
Revenge is an ego
an eye for a million.
Let shame give hope to those huddled
homeless under that same tobacco moon.
We fester in this winning glow
defeated by the loss of ourselves.
Let’s crack the mirrors
start a new language
MODSIW YTIRGETNI
ban all words that allude to truth
if we cannot change our behaviours,
erase the words that define them as moral.
Let’s break the windows and beg
on prayer mats of blood
our knees in rubble.
Escape the Beloved Country
by SUSAN ADAMS
The foetal curve
is a question mark
we revert to
not a haven for a life
lying curled on our dark side
Cry the national anthems
Hiding from the outside,
the inside of ourselves
escape is not a plan
in this State of drugged control
There are no light switches
in this suck-thumb-bare-room
loose skin is a soap polished shroud
the wall a full stop at the bend
Breathe me alive
brand me to struggle
make me scream with honest air
let me out
Susan Adams, PhD is an Australian poet published in nine countries. She was awarded “Commended” in the 2012 O’Donoghue International Poetry Competition (Ire) and “Highly Commended” in the Val Vallis Award 2012. She has been read numerous times on ABC Radio National. Recent publications include Quadrant, Westerly, Southerly, Eureka Street, Hecate, Social Alternatives, Cordite, Visible Ink. She lives on Dangar Island in the Hawkesbury River. Her first book, Beside Rivers, has been accepted for publication by Island Press for release early 2013.
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