Page 43 - Contrast2008

AShleigh M· Smi.th

Child of Gaza, 1990

The Jews came again last night,
in tanks that chewed the leftover crumbs
of our city in the teeth of its wheels
while I was pretending to sleep.
I could hear them through the walls
roaring and spewing and smoking and
knocking down three more houses, like they
were Legos.

Outside my window in the morning,
I can see the piles of white and gray, the street
covered with snowy dust.
-I've never seen real snow,
but the thin concrete powder seems
just as soft-

Mama tells me not to play
among the stones and the steel
sticking out from the hard dirt,
but there's no where else
to go. Ayham and me, we
play army doctor where the houses
once stood, fighting off the Jews
and looking for people
buried alive.

I find a teddy bear, covered
in the dust-snow and he's got an eye
hanging off. We can't save him,
so we name him Mohammed,
wrap him in white and green,
and rejoice.