my apologies for not having written anything here in awhile. i went to the Yucatan in September, wrote the final section of my poetry ms, and turned it in to my editors, and then after October, everything has been devastating, infuriating, blurry, and terrible. Palestine has been targeted by Zionism’s violence for as long as i can remember. even as a child growing up during the very televised invasion of Iraq, i can recall the news talking about Palestine and Lebanon. geography was a favorite subject of mine. had i known a geographer was an occupation, perhaps i would not have been a poet. i would look at my globe and study the raised lands from Turkey to Syria to Palestine. i wondered what their landscape was like. when i was 19 i met a boy from Houston but whose family was Palestinian. we rode a 36 hour Turimex bus to Monterrey together. he sat in the seat in front of me, and told me and another person stories. when we made it to the city, i followed him around, waiting for any details about his life or his land. we spent a week together. i got lost in the mountains on a hike. after a few hours, we found each other again and returned to the university. we drifted apart but the way i saw the world was changed. six months later, 9/11 happened. i worried about him often. he began organizing against the invasion of Afghanistan. my understanding of politics and alliances shifted. anti-war protests were no longer a thing i studied in history and journalism classes or read poems about. the first poem i wrote was an anti-war poem in 2002. the marches in the streets started. wubya had been our governor in Texas. we all knew how he was, and it was terrifying.
jenna bush attended school when i was there. we weren’t ever in a class together, but it wasn’t hard to not spot her. she has tried to rehabilitate her image as a cheerful white woman on the morning show my dad watches. i hate it. how can you be the child of a war criminal and act like he’s some goofy dad?
last year, a comrade died. he used to come to the coffeeshop i worked at, as a member of the Palestine Solidarity Committee at UT Austin. he was friends with people i knew, and he was friendly, sweet, and passionate. we always gave him free coffee or a latte on the house. PSC met often in that first floor space, and as workers, we did our best to make it an open space for them and others with similar politics. i wore my keffiyeh often at the bar, when i wasn’t working. many of us were shattered at the news of Senan’s passing. he fought fiercely for Palestinian liberation.
here we are now. 23 years later. witnessing Palestinian journalists document their genocide while Genocide Joe and Israel continue to bomb Palestinians. we are watching mass murder in real-time.
Palestinians ask us in the West to not just testify, but to throw stones, to stop what is happening. so let’s do it. let’s keep doing it. until Palestine is free. until we are all free. we can always say Palestine. we can throw our rocks at this mechanization of violence and empire. we can say to everyone we meet: from the river to the sea. Palestine will be free.
that’s where i have been. this is where i will be. thinking of zeffer and manal and bisan and all my Palestinian loves. the ones i know and do not know.
thank you for this post #FreePalestine