Dispatches From a Manmade Famine: Mohammed Moussa

As if I emerged without a
homeland, a passport, an identity—
fatherless, motherless, homeless.
Born starving, barefoot,
scavenging for fleeting scraps of
prayer beneath a shattered sky.
The truth is ignored, my suffering
swallowed, erased from their
lexicon. My body aches, my heart
corrodes, yet they still debate
whether my humanity deserves a
name.

—

No shelter left to claim,

a loaf of bread to eat,

a life to end,

a death to lend, I have my name,

what remains of my child’s scent,

and a thin memory to feed the wind.

—

How do you capture starvation
in words? Hollow bowls, hollow
promises, bellies aching like
silent bombs. Should I strip the
language bare, let it hunger?
I’ve got nothing but a fierce,
gnawing hope—devouring my
children, their cries, their
dreams, devouring me.

—

On a summer morning, I have nothing to feed
the kids screaming in my head but a starving
sun and a loaf of bread that smells of blood.

Where to hide this body? Where death lurks
in sweltering tents. I’m not scared. Even if
summer doesn’t care, doesn’t promise the
lost a way back.

But my heart is tired of holding these
goodbyes, of bombs torching tents, of deaths
gnawing at what’s left, of starving bodies. I try
to act normal, toss this heart to the hungry
raven on my rooftop, cradle a barefoot July
sun, to plant a summer morning that smells
like my mother.

Still on a summer morning I have nothing to
feed my kids, but a starving sun.

Mohammed Moussa is a Palestinian poet from Gaza. He is a freelance journalist who has written for several international news outlets. He founded the Gaza Poets Society, Gaza's first spoken word community, and hosts Gaza's first podcast, the Gaza Guy Podcast. He has published two poetry collections, Flamingo and Salted Wounds, and has contributed to numerous poetry anthologies, such as Love and Loss, the Gaza Poets Society's first anthology, and edited and contributed to the society's second anthology, My Death is Not a Song for You to Sing.

Artwork: “David and Goliath” by Safia Latif.