Poems by Lisa Suhair Majaj

Hunger: A Tritina

darkness threads the sky
wild with the throb of hunger
the tsunami of broken hope

children flail for a cord of hope
tossed from the looming sky
then fall into wells of hunger

they are well versed in hunger
their voices low with hope
pleading for bread from the sky

​the sky roars with hunger, shattered by hope

---

Gaza Haiku

In Gaza’s lean sky
moon bares its slim-edged crescent
curved blade of famine

hours before iftar
children gather in flapping tents
singing for water

our tables weighted
food a shameful privilege
we quietly fast

---

Flour Massacre

    it’s the way 
                     crimson blooms 
              across sacks 
         of flour 
        like springtime 
  poppies
                   stripped 
from their stems 
                        buds crushed 
                                      in storm’s  
                  wild onslaught
                               no chance 
                       to open 
or the way
                     bullets 
      pierce skulls 
                          charting 
          places of entry 
and sometimes 
                exit
      though for Gazans 
                              there is of course 
                 no exit
                                     or the way 
carmine tracks
          across white shrouds
                                  map the winding cloth 
                  in a grim atlas
                                     of despair
                              like the haze 
                 of flour
                           spilled 
                     from ripped sacks 
             clogging
                    the wounds 
                                  of those 
         who crawled 
                        through dirt 
        trembling 
                   with hunger
         ribs etched 
                  through skin 
            in stark 
                    precision
         not unlike 
 the exactness 
               snipers bring 
      to their task 
                 as they aim
                            carefully 
       bullets penetrating 
                  the bodies 
                                of those 
    desperate to feed 
                        their children
                                          a handful 
                          of something  
      that will not poison 
                    or sicken them
   something 
            to keep them 
                             alive 
           a little longer
    to push back 
    famine
    a day
           and another
                       and perhaps 
       even another 
                until the world 
         decides to make 
                           the siege 
                    end
          so that flour 
                           becomes 
                  an ordinary part 
                                    of life
              again
              dough kneaded 
                    with firm hands
     placed carefully 
             in an oven
                    hot with hope
    rich with 
                  the odor
          of baking
                         not this dust 
                   shrouding 
            trucks stacked 
                       deep 
          with the wounded 
and the dead
                         this despoiled
                  sustenance
of stolen life
           but rather 
                        something simple
          dependable                
                      unremarkable
                        daily bread
              for daily hunger

“Flour Massacre” first appeared in Black Warrior Review.
​THEME: Hunger in Gaza

---

Lisa Suhair Majaj is a Palestinian American writer living in Cyprus. She is the author of the award-winning collection Geographies of Light (Del Sol Press) and of the forthcoming poetry volume Why Doesn't the Sky Love Us? Her poetry has been translated into eight languages, mostly recently Korean. Her poems were displayed in the 2016 exhibition Aftermath: The Fallout of War—America and the Middle East (Harn Museum of Art).

---