Palestinian Women Encounter War

Here's another poem from The Space Between Our Footsteps. A reminder of the small details of war, life, and peace. The small details of living.
And what happens when the domestic encounters the violent.

rice haikus

we are women simple

sugar our morning tea

eat rice at all meals

we of simple land

kept the sugar in one sack

rice in another

lived off the brown earth

gave figs to fidayeen*

olives and almonds

when they raided our homes

they poured sugar into rice

to ruin them both

now we eat sweet rice

with our morning tea eat

meals of resistance

-Suheir Hammad

The daughter of Palestinian refugees, she lived in Beirut during part of the Civil War, then immigrated to New York. She describes her work as "giving voice to those who have been silenced for so long."

*fidayeen: freedom fighters