Silent Watch
Speech is out of the question.
she can tell you everything
she needs to with her eyes—
At noon, they are pointing
out a sniper—and his shadow—
watching us eat lunch
through a telescopic lens.
The Brains of Resistance
(The Battle of Jenin: West Bank, April 2002.)
The soldier’s bullet
blew the boy’s brain
clean from his skull.
The medic scooped it up
and placed it on the stretcher
next to the boy’s still-warm corpse.
It seemed to the medic
that the boy’s brain
was still firing off orders,
still gathering up stones—
hurling his hardened poems
at the tanks of occupation.
A Locksmith Lament
(Bethlehem, May 2002)
Not much business
for a locksmith in Al Bawadi.
No one loses their keys anymore—
It’s their houses and orchids
of ancient Olive Trees–
and their children–
that keep disappearing.
Mistaken Identities
They blew up an elephant
on the outskirts of Gaza.
They mistook its trunk
for a Hamas Militant,
brandishing
a grenade launcher.
– Dennis J. Bernstein is an award-winning investigative reporter and the host and executive producer of Flashpoints. He contributed these poems to The Palestine Chronicle.
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