Vox Humana Literary Journal

by Noel Canin

Gaza

For Dr Abulaish and his family

January 2009

In the time it takes to cross a room
a building is ripped out, gapes
upon men women and children
in the baited embrace of a bomb.

In the time it takes to cross the street
you are dead, or perhaps alive, alive perhaps,
the misshapen dead bleeding
upon your life
now strewn across the city

Between the whistling slabs of concrete
you recognize the hem of her dress
what it is the bomb releases into
the homes of the living
in the time it takes to cross a room
cross the street
turn around, stumble
into the cratered fracture of the heart.

Caw

Caw Caw
he said.
Sound.
It was just before Ginsberg came
to sit there calling about his mother’s eyes.
Sound,
he said.
I didn’t want to remember
another hospital bed,
recall brown eyes -
but to listen for sound,
as he said,
Caw Caw.
Salt writhe of seaweed -
Ullyses upon the beach -
There was a film,
metallic motion of cameras,
grains of sand
giving way at the water’s edge,
and Eliot’s sea-girls.
Faber and Faber thin,
the crackle of paper in memory.
Always the waves
crushing liquid
against the rocks,
and shells later on at home.
The brown table,
and ships sailing past the veranda
to England.

War Watching

Israel, January, 2009

I know what blood looks like, she said
I know what a home looks like
before and after a bomb

I know what dead bodies look like
how parents rock dead children to their
hearts as if their own heart could regenerate
those small death-shocked organs

I don’t need Sky News or French TV
to bring the war to me

I don’t need the BBC or CNN
to take me to the action

my country provides a package deal
free
annual
and consensual