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Volume 4

September 2008

Number 2


Literary Contributions





At the Israeli Checkpoint: Palestine
(for Mahmoud Darwish, in memory of the greatest of Arab Poets)
by Sam Hamod

At the checkpoint, the
Israeli private asked me my name, I told
her, my name is
Zaitoun, she asked, what does that mean,
I told her 4,000 year old trees, she laughed,
asked for my real name, I told her, "Dumm," what?
i said, it means blood, she said, that's no name, I told her
blood of my grandfather, my father, my uncle
and even mine if necessary, she bridled, called the corporal,
he came running up, said, what kind of threat is that,
I said, it's no threat, it's just a fact,
he called the sergeant, he came up and hit me before he spoke,
my mouth bled, I told him, this is the blood I mean, that same
blood, you are afraid of, it's over 4000 years old, see how dark it is
he called the lieutenant, who asked why my mouth was bleeding,
the sergeant said I had threatened him, the lieutant asked me
if that was the truth, I told him, I had only stated facts, that
they would be true, after they conferred, he called the
colonel, the colonel came over and asked why I'd been provocative,
I said,all I was doing was stating facts; he asked what I did,
I told him, I was a farmer, he asked what kind, I told him
a farmer with words, what some call a poet—
he asked me if I knew the work of Amichai, I told him yes,
that I'd met him, that he knew what I meant, that Amichai was
sorry for what he'd felt he "had to do"—the colonel shrugged
dismissed the others and told me, "pass on,
I understand, but they don't, they are not Jews, I am Jew,
not a Zionist"
I pulled the qhubz arabi from my pocket, pulled some zaitoun
from another, some jibbin from my bag and gave it to him--
we laughed, he split the bread in half—
we ate together, we cried and laughed at how sad and foolish all this was

*qhubz arabi: bread of the Arabs
zaitoun: olives
jibbin: Arab style yogurt cheese





Mourning Muezzin: Mogadishu
by Sam Hamod

Each day
Afternoon
Gives us hot sun and
Mogadishu-- trees we’ve cut
Return, ghosts we wish still were green,
Each day centuries of barren
Afternoons hot
Sun dry mouth
Drying
Our skin
Burns in slash of wind whipping sand
Out of the dry eddies and dry
River beds-- here we have built our
Houses thick against the sun
Here we have found ways
To make music
From our old
Skins empty pots and
Left over gut -- lean
Air even the pliant sounds
Of our mourning muezzin
Is no less painful, even his voice calling
For Allah is no
Balm I remember
A Palestinian woman, a
Wrinkled desert
Woman, sitting in her mottled clay
Hut
Without windows
Without water
Without……...
Saying, “Sometimes
I think even Allah
Has forgotten us” sometimes here
In Mogadishu when blowing wind harshes
Against the few remaining trees, when
Wheat parches white against brown earth shredding,
when
Aideed’s men rattle streets
With 50 calibre shells when
Even those who
Came to save us
Explode flares and rockets into our
Night -- even then, the burn of
Phosphorus
Is nothing
Compared to the burning
Dryness
In our hearts






Sam Hamod has his PhD. from The Writers' Workshop of the University of Iowa and has taught in the Workshop; he was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry, has published 10 books of poems, and has appeared in dozens of anthologies in the U.S. and abroad. He has also taught creative writing at the University of Iowa, Princeton, Michigan, Wisconsin, Howard and overseas as well. His most recent books were, JUST LOVE POEMS FOR YOU (2006), Ishmael Reed Pub. Co/Contemporary Poetry Press and THE ARAB POEMS, THE MUSLIM POEMS (2000), Contemporary Poetry Press/Cedar Creek; he has two more books of poems under contract and his memoirs as well. He has won many awards over the years, and in addition has read with such poets as Kinnell, Ginsberg, Merwin, Wright, Knight, Baraka and others, and has had praise from Neruda, Borges and such American poets as Ishmael Reed, James Wright, Dick Hugo, Jack Marshall, Amiri Baraka and E. Ethelbert Miller among others.










Magpie Sounds Out the American Dream
by Nicholas A. Alvarado

magpie squawked on a telephone wire this morning
cheerleading with a KEE Ree KEE Ree
as if she could channel
every electric communication
zipping beneath her feet
as if she could squander
cities happening with her melody
and yes, I saw only one magpie
and from the latest British source
one for sorrow, two for joy Boy
saddens me not, for a solo prophet resounds
louder than two battling for the crown
even if hydroelectric drones or stoplight signals
attempt to mute her glorious chatter
with Vanity fairs and cosmopolitan prompts
Jiffy foods and bigger tires for tearing up the turf,
Ambitions that careen through blinking supernova splatter
as glorified amoebas screech 200,000 year old war chants
by their sky bound towers
their Spruce Goose and moon footprints
their subterranean leviathans
And their earth bound towers
where morale swings
center marked Ground Zero

so now, I think I have seen Lady Liberty tumble back
through acidic tunnels of Eve’s long vacant womb

and there was a magpie disrupting Aurora's wake of woven dew
busting silent granite, then curling room to room, round
tender infant limbs, invading Dream's recess,
her warbling crawl christening sleight of dawn
coaxing a sentiment from pasture's gentle folk
"Why, our kind has just begun."
and the magpie quipped KEE Ree! to sunlight's clopping hooves.





Nicholas A. Alvarado is a freelance poet and fiction writer currently living on the South Korean peninsula. He studied English literature, philosophy, and ESL pedagogy at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in California. His home state of California, experiences abroad, a Mexican American background, and love for abstract metaphor characterize his work.



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