“A star said yesterday:
in Gaza we become light”
- Hiba Abu Nada, Palestinian poet and writer killed when an airstrike hit her home in October 2023. 

The poets writing from the wreckage of the ongoing Genocide in Gaza have a lot to say and we need to listen. That poetry would come out of unspeakable horror is not new; from the poems of holocaust survivor Paul Celan to Armenian poets like Daniel Varoujan, through Rwanda, Bosnia, Cambodia to those writing about colonial violence and the long shadow of Genocide on Turtle Island today. That poetry would specifically come out of Gaza is hardly surprising, though the besieged  and occupied strip is mired in death and destruction, the truth is that beauty, literature and art have always lived there. 

What the Genocide makes evident is  that poetry is the place where we go when there are “no more words”, only to go further and deeper. In this way, Haidar al-Ghazali’s poems straddle despair and hope beyond language.

Throughout this year, The Key will publish poetry from writers and poets whose voices are a reckoning for all of us. Whether they regularly publish or are writing for the first time, the editorial team will seek and curate pieces that continue to witness long after the headlines have moved on. 

Jehan Bseiso

I

The census officer will come.
He'll inspect
the streets and houses. And
with a ballpoint pen,
he'll record our losses. Then
depart
without seeing my heart.

The census officer will come.
He'll inspect
the streets and houses. Then
leave me to count my ruins
with fingerless hands.

II

To own a small house in Palestine
means
wiping your fingerprints from the cooking utensils,
your tears from the pillows;
not feeding the birds at morning;
ripping up the photo album
and the letters;
wiping the kiss of memory from the mirror.
The soldiers will come,
to kill you on the charge of life.
And you must forget your shadow
on the walls;
Soldiers will come—
to kill you for being alive.
Forget your shadow on the walls.
They’ll tire of haunting blood in it,
never learning
the secret of the light
in you.

III

In childhood,
I made my siblings
a tent of pillows
and blankets.
It would fall on us,
and we’d laugh.
The tent walked us far,
out of the house
and the homeland.
It fell on us,
and we died.
Next time,
I will make my siblings
a homeland
that returns them home.