Kathy Engel: What’s Another Word for Genocide

Whole families, my neighbors are killed. We left our house on Thursday. Two hours ago, I just went back home to get some food and clothes. And just a few minutes ago, they bombed my neighbors. They are dead. We are dead.

                         -Mosab Abu-Toha, Gaza, Oct. 14, 2023 

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Dear Mosab are you there
can you hear the voices reading
your poems into terrified air
here there we saw it coming

did we this and today I stood at
the shore recalled a summer photo
you at the sea in Gaza said you
wanted all to know her beauty

in April you told my students
a poem starts anywhere one
small drop of water traveling that’s
what I remember you saying

softly to their thirst now
no water I hoard your words
repeat them as prayer wear them
as shawl close to the skin how

do I dare from here this but
my government can stop it
instead uses taxes I pay
from teaching to fire white

phosphorous steal the sky
from dream pummeling stones
that built homes like arrows
into flesh you write and

write the body-filled death
bed of fire split open
when will you get food again
who is sleeping at all even

the questions violate
some things not to be
imagined are red juicy strawberries still
rising up out of the thrashed earth

where I am the ocean glimmers
greenblue deceptively calm where
is where we saw this coming
but no not couldn’t I

call up my ghosts who fled
a pogrom even the blue &
black birds this morning
screech and flap CEASEFIRE

CEASEFIRE the only word
they are mourning they are
telling no borders in the air
who in the world could believe

who could look away the waves
between us wail shudder
tides ache dragging fragments
of memory in shattered boats

stripped pages no rudder no sail
where is there your poems walk
me from place to place I search
usefulness in a mirror of horror

this is not a new story worse
no words I can carve We are dead
you write what’s another word
for genocide I’m afraid to ask

about the library did books check
themselves out first another word
for complicity I send my love
the only way I know how

does it arrive blind
folded shredded between
missiles or become one arrive
at all love is an action is

it water if I could turn
myself into a current rushing
to stop the burn that is home
that was quench a child’s throat

if I could surge such blessings
sea to river to sea be water
channeling to another air I
frantically try to make a better

poem for you as though it
could can you feel mouths
everywhere ushering your words
each small drop of [holy] water

an ocean

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for Mosab and the people of Gaza, Oct 19, 2023

Copyright 2023 Kathy Engel

Kathy Engel is an Associate Professor in NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her latest poetry collection, The Lost Brother Alphabet, was published by Get Fresh Books in 2020. She has co-founded numerous organizations, including MADRE (1983), an international women’s human rights group, which she directed for five years.