‘Of Bombs and Wombs’ and other Gaza poems

I, Occupation

By

Wanjohi wa Makokha

I want to occur in a moment / In fact / I want to go far / Make a comment

I hear the air raided / A groan rents skies / Above Palestine

It is a loud but soft / Sign, endless whine / So gigantic is it

It fits in blinks of eyes / It is also the size / Of the dot / Of a question mark

Mark my lines here / Make ears of Earth / Hear

I want to occupy yes / A minute moment / Bubble a poem / Imprison my mind

In this little space / Where safety dies / In Israeli solace...

II.

Shopping Shots

By

Wanjohi wa Makokha

 An unknown person shot / at a Gaza bookshop / thrice:

First in the shelves / Beneath the eaves / With a nest of doves

Then in the cracked corner / Where a mosque mouse / head’s a home of one

Finally, in the floor / Where a wasted mat / Now mourns its user

Yes. Three shots read / A summary of Gaza / In staccato. Thrice

III.

Of Bombs and Wombs

By

Wanjohi wa Makokha

They move in a line of two / Behind the siren receding / Clouds of dust clapping / Their linen full of grief

They bear down the road / Billboards on coronavirus / Bearing words of caution / To their unmasked minds

The wind is still and lonely / No more. The air they like / Now is a playground full / Of sirens, loud silences too 

Who are these that walk / In the shadow of silences / Past a pandemic billboard / Bearing nothing but faith?

The faith they carry is real / It is as real as a bombed sky / It is as real as their hijabs / That like a broken minaret / hide families alive no more / In the heat of a battlefield / Where men talk in bombs / Women, with their wombs

IV:

Road from Damascus

By

Wanjohi wa Makokha

Like the road to Damascus / That brings men to realities / Of encounters with deities / In their cold commitment / To duty and achievement

Like the road to Damascus / That dark is like midnight / Yet lit can be at high noon / By the ray of revelations / That make the blind see

The winding road to Gaza / Is a line in the Hebrew song? / Which long before this day / Spoke of a land so far away / That it made poets die for it

The road to Gaza is painful / It promises rain to a desert / The road to Gaza is painful / It offers blood to the thirsty / Who plies it today as death?

The sun sails the blue skies / Yes a poet pays tribute to it / The moon dances with night / Yet the road to Gaza goes on / Slowly it drifts from Damascus 

Wanjohi wa Makokha is the sobriquet of JKS Makokha, a Kenyan poet and author of Nest of Stones: Kenyan Narratives in Verse (2010)