1. The Silence
She has given up speech for sign language.
She is learning how to sing with her hands,
how to scream and shout without parting her lips
or betraying her coordinates. The truth is
she can tell you everything she needs to with her eyes;
right now, they are pointing out a sniper—and his shadow—
watching us eat lunch through a telescopic lens.
2. Disappearing Stones
These days the dead are too angry to die.
I see their hands reaching up out of the grave,
grasping for stones. I can’t tell anymore
which side of this dream I’m on. Last night
I buried my niece and marked her place
with a few fine stones—By dawn, they were gone.
3. The Brains of Resistance
The soldier’s bullet blew the boy’s brain
clean from his skull. The medic scooped it up
and placed it on the stretcher next to the young
boy’s corpse. It seemed to the medic that the child’s
brain was still firing off orders,still gathering up stones—
hurling these hardened poems at the tanks of occupation.