Vox Populi
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Angele Ellis: In Lebanon, 2000 June
It was the summer the Israelis withdrew, leaving behind a landmined no-man's-land of phosphorus orange groves, blighted with white like the kingdom of the Snow Queen. We shuddered with each jolt of the road, despite our driver’s ancestral insouciance: This route has been cleared. We stopped and showed our papers at every checkpoint, Lebanese Army, Syrian Army, Hezbollah… The closer we came to the border with Israel, the more I closed the valves of my attention. I envisioned the Crusader castle at Sidon—its riot of orange daylilies—becoming flaming spirits of the dead, silently screaming in the village wreckage of Qana. The UN soldiers at the cinderblock outpost were kind. We showed our papers, and exchanged chipper smiles as we approached the barbed wire of Palestine. Daddy pitched his scooped bit of rubble through the chain links— as Edward Said had done—but I kept mine clenched inside my palm until it broke the slippery skin. A shard lodged in the privilege of my American passport. Another pierced my damaged heart—surging in cardiac panic at the helplessness of history.
Copyright 2020 Angele Ellis (forthcoming in the anthology Show Us Your Papers published by Main Street Rag)
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found it more involved than other poems by the poet. But each is linked with the human questions in own accord.
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Powerful. Thank you.
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Thanks for this Angele. It is so important to name the place and the date and fill in the details, to be witness. We forget history at our peril, so our task is to record it and remember it and share it – which is exactly what you do!
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Thanks, David. I agree in the importance of being a witness and recording what we see. Angele is a beautiful witness.
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