cardiogrammar

instead of a kiss-o-gram,
perhaps a cardiogram?
my heart, written out
as stuttering toothed calligraphy, worn
on a slip of sleeve
for you to hold
and fold
up in your chest
pocket, where it maps
the gone-but-not-forgotten
beats of my excited muscle
that promised, in its time
dilating, diastolic way
to stay, to stay

Venus as momenti mori

according to NASA
Venus may have had a shallow
water ocean and habitable surface clime
for up to two billion years

which is a very long time

long enough for geochemistry
to become biochemistry
to become cells
become organs
become "intelligent"

i like to think
that intelligent beings did roam on Venus
made languages and tools
built empires and tech
but then fucked it all up
and turned the planet into a dusty wasteland
having got carried away
by inclinations for novelty
and convenience
and the desire for power

so i think that, perhaps
when we look to the stars
and see Venus, fossil-like
alarmingly bright in the night
that we might be looking
our fate in the face
a world-sized skull
that stares back at us
with ocean-sized eyes

but don't cry
it's only the end of a world

kh like khummus

"kh like khummus" by Bazeed is the winner of the 2023 Resistance & Resilience Prize

First they send in the girl soldiers.

They look better
not the soldiers themselves, I mean
no, no; the optics-
than sending even a tiny battalion of boy soldiers
to peel the old woman
off her son's grave.

Ruth Eglash, writing for the Washington Post
Has an article on the rise in the Israeli army
of voluntary orthodox girl recruits:

"Within a few weeks of starting their military service,
many Israeli women head to a tailor

to have their oversize uniforms altered
to be more form-fitting [...and] fashionable."

Army cum gender equality cum runway.

 

If you hover over her name,
Ruth Eglash, a helpful little box comes up.
It tells you Ruth is a

"reporter covering [for] Israel
and the Palestinian Territories." In
other words, colonialism's her beat.

Cuz that's part of how you steal a country, dontcha know,
right from under its indigenous inhabitants' feet:
Proper nouns turned adjective-
Israel as "Israel" is a nation-state,
Palestine, as "territories", pile
of black caviar on a plate,
ready for eating.

Have you ever been to territories
in the summer?                          I hear it's lovely
                            this time of year!

Keep up with that kind of thing,
and you'd very likely stand to win
the very khummus out of the bowl
with its traditional blue & white [star of flowers]
motif.

 

¹ this poem is in response to this video, showing a Palestinian mother attempting to halt the demolition of her son's grave in Al Yusufiyah cemetery in occupied East Jerusalem, to make way for an Israeli theme park planned in its place. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N jGFb3Yyv0