Gaza has become a funeral home,
but there are no seats,
no mourners, no bodies.
In the caskets are nothing but
what remained of the dead’s clothes,
and on the crumbling walls are clocks
that have not moved for fourteen months.
Copyright © 2025 by Mosab Abu Toha. Published by permission of the author.
Another child in Gaza—unseeable under rubble,
but for one arm
jutting out of sharp and rocky ruins,
her fingers curling and uncurling.
She must have heard the man calling out—
here to lift
hunks of a building off of the living—
he hopes — calling out again and again,
is anyone here? is anyone alive?
Her fingers answer.
Her fingers are her mouth and tongue now,
curling and uncurling, they call out,
I’m here, over here, I’m here, right here,
I’m here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here,
Copyright © 2023 by Haleh Liza Gafori. This poem was first printed in The Brooklyn Rail (December 2023 / January 2024). Used with the permission of the author.