"Double Exposure" in Duende

Beautiful Gaza Beach

I am happy to share my poem published in Duende today.  Double Exposure: written about an incident I experienced when I was in Gaza doing human rights work in the winter of 1995.

DOUBLE EXPOSURE
SUSAN RICH

Get in, Omar motions and that’s how it happens—
the last tendril of hope caught in the door’s slam,
the comet of exhaust, the kilometers expanding
as Samir flies along Gaza’s last highway.
No watermelon vendors, no farmers, no
women for me to signal and say Salam Alaikum? Shokrun?
In the front seat, two men in the darkest
of sunglasses, laugh and argue in Arabic
and it’s depressingly clear they’re discussing me.
I consider the road’s dirt shoulder,
velocity divided by speed, my body ribboned to red.
And how awkward if I could even open the door—
if I found my will frozen, my courage asleep.
An old sentence beats its rhythm in my ear:
They want to throw us into the sea! Into the sea!
The story I learned from my grandmother’s neighbor—
I was seven and she an Auschwitz survivor.
And then there is silence. It’s all been decided.
To the east of us, a kind of dreamscape fades in

To read the rest of the poem go here.