Questions Shaped Like Names ('holding' as prompt)

In our short time together here, I’ve shared poems that dip into a pretty wide ocean of topics, themes, and feelings. The poems that have felt the hardest to share are the ones that dive into the darker corners of my own experience. I find my people-pleasing self not wanting to be a “downer.” Given the choice, I’d rather lift people up than throw a wet blanket over a day that might have already felt soggy. But I also want everyone sharing here to feel free to share all the parts of themselves and their experiences—not just the sunny ones. That’s the magic of the community that’s sprung up in the comments thread. Your poems and comments have made me laugh and made me cry, and both of those experiences feel sacred.

My poem today isn’t funny, and it isn’t sunny. It’s about the genocide occurring in Gaza. It’s also about love—because grief is about love, and the horror I feel over what is happening to Palestinians is about love.

For context, this poem was inspired by a video I watched a few days ago (I think it was from Al Jazeera, but unfortunately I can’t find it now), in which a Gazan medical worker discovers that his young son is among the freshly wounded at the hospital where he is working, and the two are reunited.

Questions Shaped Like Names

Thick gauze wraps around his tiny head,
white halo on black hair.
“Baba!” he cries and is lifted
into the warm sky of a father’s arms.
“My love, my boy,” the man cries, and
he is really crying. I would, too—
working all night there in the hospital
then finding my own child
among the wounded.
“Did they bomb the house?” he asks. 
The angel bobs his head,
and his father wails
like a siren.

He was staunching bleeding
and stitching wounds. 
Now all he can do is shape names
into questions.

“Where is Mama?”
“Where is Motaz?”
The bandaged boy points to the heavens,
and the sky is crumbling.
Baba weeps the words again and again—
“Mama, where’s Mama?”

I can hear his sobs from six thousand miles away.
How long does it take
for air to travel the globe?
How long until we are all
breathing Rafah? 

I walk the fields and beseech the ground— 
what do I need to let go of
so that I can hold all of this?

Three does leap from the brush,
their tails waving white flags.
I am startled by delight,
am startled, again, to find
that such a feeling is possible
under this sky,
against this ground.  

I surrender
any pretense
to understanding.
I tip from grief to joy
and back again.
I am laughing.
I am crying. 
Maybe this tipping
is the way to hold it all,
weights counterbalanced
on the sides of my body.
A way to stay upright
instead of hunching
into half my humanity. 

My dog bounds ahead
then halts abruptly,
thorns tangled against his leg.
I prick my finger 
to set him free. 

If I prick nine more,
will it see you free?
How many hands
do you need and
how much holding?

How many voices raised
to the pitch of sirens
until 
finally 
the only thing
dropping over Gaza
is a white flag,
an olive branch,
sackcloth against the ashes
of all that’s burned? 

Photo by Emre on Unsplash

The Prompt

If you like your prompts short and punchy, then today’s word is holding. If you prefer a prompt that’s more expansive, then here are some questions to sit with. What too-heavy-to-carry thing are you trying to hold? How do you a hold a thing—any thing? Where do you put the grief or the rage? How do you channel it? How do you use it for good—or wish you were using it for good? How do you forgive yourself for sometimes bending your grief or rage in other directions, too? Where and when do you find delight? Are you able to hold delight—to be fully in delight—without guilt or withholding? If not, what might allow you to do so? Where is love in all of this? When do you feel most connected to your humanity? To your place within the web of all life?

Thank you for the beautiful space you hold for my poems and for the gorgeous and heartfelt poems that pop up in the comments threads. Whatever it is you are holding right now, I wish you some unexpected shimmer of delight today.