through the soft hands of autumn
I let the hurricane burn
against my heart.
What else are we to do
with all this anger?
The world will end &
we will let it.

Every day a kiss is stolen
by one stranger
from another.
Every day a building
comes down
on a child.

They call this being
unalived.

This is the world that we are making:
Not everyone gets
to smell thyme on their fingers
or to cook a simple dish
for the one who holds
their heart.

Not everyone gets
a life in roses,
nor even in crumbs.

Yesterday I saw wild horses
graze a hillside, in the fog.
They could not look at me
nor me at them
for shame.

Men tell me that some of us
are worth avenging;
some of us are human
animals.

This is a logic
I’ve heard before,
having once stood
in a zoo & been fed
to lions.

The world grows small in rain
but does not stay that way.

Because after autumn there are
other autumns,
we learn to eat the wind.
This is what we shall do
with all our anger.

Eat the wind &
spit it out.

Sometimes the waves
will rise so high in our mouths
they’ll flood out
and drown windfarms
off the coasts of rich
& modern countries.

Sometimes we’ll open
our chests &,
teeth first,
throw ourselves
from great heights.

Do not mistake us.

This is the world &
we will take it.

This is the longest moment ever.
And this one.

And this

Note: This poem references words (‘human animals’) used by Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to dehumanise Palestinians. The stanza following refers to propaganda spread before the Bosnian War. Bosnian Muslims were accused of feeding Serb babies to lions in the Sarajevo zoo. Like the false claims that Hamas beheaded babies, this disinformation was also used as justification for the genocide that followed.

This poem also adapts a few lines from Philip Shaefer’s poem ‘Suture’.

Image: Elsa Brenner