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An abstract image of a "time warp": bright, wavy lines of yellow light burst over a dark space, perhaps the ocean.

Poem for Gaza

Randa Tawil

Time bent
cracked open, looks
like the wavy graphs I made in AB Calc
& I cannot remember____ why
they looked like that
A scale, history is combusting

timelines

flashing in front

and then my eyes.

Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Gaza

48, 67, 1992, 2023
There are moments, flickering hope. A new world.

But then I see
My friends are dying of thirst
how can someone die of thirst?
Armenian death marches in Syria, Gaza
Death marches to Siberia, Gaza
Time is bent. It has cracked open. Destiny is devouring us.

 

 

 

 

Randa Tawil is a Palestinian Lebanese poet and Assistant Professor of Women and Gender Studies at Texas Christian University. She received her doctorate in the Department of American Studies at Yale University, and she specializes in migration and mobility, ethnic studies, and Arab/Middle Eastern American studies.

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