rise, rise—now evening dies: sun-born in valleys with burning olive trees—where  women like me plod one day at a time, clad in their rape blankets and wombs cut open inside half-shattered tents, because there are no means to buy numbing balms to soothe their labour; raw bellies of dead children and stillborns scattered like the helter-skelter of hungry ants running to relish in the sweetness of what doesn't exist—palestine is my grieving mother, sitting on the kerb with her head buried between her thin knees.  these are the tragedies we shall not forget, these are the tragedies we cannot ease. and  so today I sit on my bed, gentled by the uneasy silence…so many echoes in this world, and can you hear it? knot-heaps of rain-drawn chariots, scrubbed clean and shamed to death, on their way to shallow earth.

Snata Basu is an aspiring poet from Dhaka, Bangladesh. Her work mostly centers on passionate, personal bindings. She is currently pursuing Bachelor of Arts in English Literature at North South University.