No Longer

- By Zeina Azzam

Photo by Hosny Salah, from Pixabay

The Israeli government is using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare in the Gaza Strip, which is a war crime.
                                                                                                                                        –  Human Rights Watch

An orange
is no longer an orange.
It is neither round nor orange.
There is no invocation of a small sun
in our hands, the golden juice
from groves of our beloved Jaffa.

A loaf of bread
is no longer a loaf of bread.
We are not allowed to remember
the wheat that reached for the sun,
the yeast that multiplied, the loaves baking
on hot glowing stones of the clay taboon.

A cup of water
is no longer a cup of water.
The cup has holes, the water
has turned to dust
and disappeared
into the rubble.

Those human beings
are no longer human beings.
They forge weapons from water and salt,
from our oil and our wheat,
stalk us with tanks and drones,
cheer
as our desiccated bodies
bleed, wither, fall.
 

ZEINA AZZAM is a Palestinian American poet, writer, editor, and community activist. She is the poet laureate of the City of Alexandria, Virginia, for 2022-2025. Zeina’s full-length poetry collection, Some Things Never Leave You, was published in 2023 and her chapbook, Bayna Bayna, In-Between, in 2021. Zeina serves as a mentor for We Are Not Numbers, a writing program for youth in Gaza.