Claire Reutter
We women be
when we see the beauty in Claudine Gay and Elizabeth Magill
who they tried to kill but we know still live;
when we hear the pleas in Rashida Tlaib
who they tried to silence but we still hear;
when we feel the fear, and when we hear the cries that echo
echo beneath the Gaza rubble.
We women be
when we say their names, any single one of the tens of thousands,
whether we can pronounce them or not:
Watin Al-Saidi, Mohammad Atallah, Omar Shamlakh, Mahmoud Al-Baba….
We can at least say the “easy” ones that begin with names we know
Sara, Rose, Joel, Joan, Eliana and Maria—
lives tragically, senselessly ended before they lived to see three years.
We women be
when we smell death all around, as
we witness the pulverized bodies ascend into the heavens, then
watch them sink back down again deep into hell.
We taste the dry parched, hungry lips,
where we feel for our sisters who can no longer so much as swallow, but
we still hear their calls to Allah or G-d or no-one, weeping for the babies:
“What did any of us ever do wrong? Why were we even born?”
Maybe it’s just a whisper but we hear…a call to love.
That is when our lives begin,
when the you’s and I’s come together, piercing pangs of passion,
we stare with steady eyes at the colonizers as we throw away their lies.
And when we finally turn away from them
we struggle to speak, but speak we do, to our own tune.
And we play and dance and sing,
as sensible, sensitive, sensuous women beings
who dream of how to live together in beloved community—
bewildered and beholden not,
just bedazzled and bewitched.
We women be
when we remember what was and we re-member what can and will be,
as we create the rightful and mighty new reality.
Claire Reutter makes her home in New England and will soon move back to Austin—deep in the heart (and heat!) of Texas—where at least she knows how to fight. She can be reached at cdsittinginatree@yahoo.com.