oranges
for Mosab Abu Toha
the poet at the reading says we can leave
we don’t have to look
if we feel this is too much
it’s easier
to see the photos he presents
before the war
his friend in a field of bright-red strawberries
his wife and children in the garden where he used to play
his mother with that worried look
stuffing his bag with oranges
we don’t have to see the old man grieving
the lost voices of his grandsons
the house he used to live in broken open
his mother digging with her hands through white debris
i think of the photo of my mother
in schoolgirl blouse and skirt
hair brittled from the scurvy
standing on the rubble that was Tokyo
“Every child in Gaza is me. Every mother and father is me,” says Palestinian poet, teacher, and writer Mosab Abu Toha. Toha, along with his wife and children, evacuated their home in Gaza and moved to a refugee camp after Israel warned it would bomb Beit Lahiya. His debut book of poetry, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear, won the 2022 Palestine Book Award.
- Kathleen Hellen is the recipient of the James Still Award, the Thomas Merton Prize for Poetry of the Sacred, and prizes from the H.O.W. Journal and Washington Square Review. Her debut collection Umberto’s Night won the poetry prize from Washington Writers’ Publishing House. Hellen is the author of The Only Country Was the Color of My Skin, Meet Me at the Bottom, and two chapbooks.
- Email: khe1721111@aol.com
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