Poetry ww.aljazeerah.info
Human Price of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine
Israeli daily aggression on the Palestinian people
Mission and meaning of Al-Jazeerah
Cities, localities, and tourist attractions
|
|
Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq
By Rafiq Kathwari
April 26, 2004
Poem 1
ISRAELI PATROLS KILL
90 DOGS IN ARAB TOWN
The New York Times, April 14, 1995
Mother, I’m living in sin with an Egyptian
Jew raised in Paris. We stroll in Central Park.
Gaulois, her mutt, off the leash. Lucky he’s
not in Hebron, where gods kill dogs for sport.
Poem 2
HISTORY’S MOST PERSECUTED MINORITY
IS INSENSITIVE TO THE ASPIRATIONS
OF WORLD’S MOST DISPOSSESSED TRIBE
I held my sister-in-law’s hand
in the back seat of the Volkswagen
while my older brother drove
through red lights to Maimonides.
“Kicking,” she said, drawing my hand
over her belly. I lowered my gaze: Her
toes curled on the car floor.
He was born a Scorpio.
For years I watched my nephew
dunk hoops, grow his hair long, flunk
Islam and embrace the NRA,
his dad’s rifle on boy’s shoulder.
“On Judgment Day,” he wrote
“We shall meet again.”
Allah’s soldier flung a stone
somewhere in Afghanistan
the enemy fired arcs across
a cobalt sky. In their Brooklyn yard
his mom was pruning roses
the day the call came.
Poem 3
ASSIGNMENT
Only Muslim in the workshop,
I went on about the President,
his firm stand on Iraq,
civilization’s cradle, bombed
back to the Stone Age for flaunting
weapons sold by capitalist gunrunners.
I am a witness, I must howl, I said.
In every well in Baghdad a Rafiq
is weeping while long black coats (with
gas masks) huddle at the Wailing Wall,
as if prayers could halt smart bombs.
“Rhetoric, not lyric,” my peers echoed Yeats.
“Argue with yourself, not others.” The teacher,
an adjunct, said “Presidential warhead
rising from its silo was over the top. Nike
stockpiling kneepads, sick. Not ars poetica.”
***
Rafiq Kathwaria is a Kashmiri-American poet and author of the award-winning website http://KashmirRetextured.com
 |
| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
 |
| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
 |
| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python. (Alquds,10/25/03). |
 |