For the thousands of “Wounded Children, No Surviving Family” in Gaza
I am cut short My bloodline snipped My life too brief For any memories The bomb blast wiped them clean My legs are stumps As stubby as this verse. The doctors can’t tell me My given or my family name How many brothers I once had How many sisters I have lost I’ll never know The color of my mother’s eyes Or hear her lullabies I’ll never hear The timbre of my father’s voice The prayers he might Have offered up for me I am, indeed, An only child. But buried deep Beneath the shrapnel scars A vision stirs, a vision that They can’t obliterate It beckons me It takes shape when I dream: The home they drove our forebears from; The orchards plush With olive trees The verdant fields our forebears used to tend And which they occupied; The homeland which we won’t forsake – Our native land which nurtured us And won’t relinquish us, no matter what – Not even if they exile us to Mars! No, even if they bury us Beneath the fifty million tons of rubble mounds Which scar this ravaged abattoir Its name will rise again: No drone can drown it out No bomb can level it No sharpshooter can mow it down No bulldozer can bury it No diplomat can veto it It can’t be starved into oblivion Or burned away It’s inscribed in our DNA In martyrs’ blood. It pulses in MY blood It will not be denied And, inshallah, If I survive, I’ll pass it on To MY children someday. Because of it You can’t make me Anonymous, You can’t reduce me to A bloodless stat. Because of it I cannot be dehumanized Or demonized Or Orientalized Or scornfully erased Because of it I cannot be condensed To a mere acronym.
Steve Babb (he/him) is a retired public health worker who has fought for social justice for his entire adult life. He has written poems on a variety of social justice struggles, including immigrant detention, the death penalty, and solidarity with Central America and Gaza. He has been inspired by the poetry of witness of Anna Akhmatova, Mahmoud Darwish, Refaat Alareer, Hiba Abu Nada, Mosab Abu Toha, Fadi Joudah, Roque Dalton, Carolyn Forché, Wilfred Owen, Clint Smith, Javier Zamora, and Nour Elassy. Steve has had poems published in The Rising Phoenix Review, IMMPRINT (A project of Freedom for Immigrants), and Mothering Magazine.
