One Poem by Antonia Alexandra Klimenko

 

The Gaza Stripped 

 

Goodbye my husband   Goodbye my lover 

father mother sister brother 

Palestine   all that was mine 

Goodbye my other 

 

Goodbye pretense   goodbye innocence 

Goodbye anything   that ever made any sense  

Goodbye earth    sky   sun and moon 

Don’t ask why   death comes too soon 

 

Goodbye ticking bombs   clocks with no hands  

a world that buries its head in the sand 

That scrolls and stares   into thin air 

while they take what they want 

How much do you care?!  

 

So   watch me strip   down to the quick 

Next year’s pic on your Netflix  

Tune in   zoom in   feel no shame  

(no cover charge) 

Let   me    entertain      you 

 

Watch    as I bare my soul   

                              my arms   my legs   

Enter me here   Hear me beg 

See them tear off half my face   

as they remove their veil   

            erase our race 

 

You buyers   sellers    traders of breath 

what will you give me   for a pound of flesh? 

Our open wounds   the mouth of our red sea    

screaming to the sound of rockets   What’s left of me? 

 

A river of blood   a flood of tears   out of every pore   

while you count your money   line your pockets 

What am I bid   for these blind empty sockets? 

What more do you want    what more! 

 

You’ve tortured   you’ve lied   you’ve occupied 

Our home   once free and green   is dying   

And you with your vengeful genocide   

your plutocracy    your hypocrisy  

have reduced rubble   to the obscene 

 

Branches burning   felled olive limbs  

our names engraved   upon our skin 

Skin stretched across your drums of war 

Hear us roar   Hear us roar    

 

Beat your chest   roll your eyes 

scroll past death   like dust we rise 

You think there’s nothing left?  Surprise! 

You haven’t seen anything yet! 

 

The cries of our children   

echo through the terrain   Their pain 

their empty hands   their dear crushed fingers  

spring forth like roots from the earth    

All that remains of worth   will linger   

Every year   a rebirth 

 

So stroll past   scroll past   

But not so fast   

We are all just passing through 

In another life   you could be me    

I pray    I'll never be you 

 

I try to forgive   with my last breath 

You take that too   lest I forget 

all that I love 

all that's unspoken  

 

Goodbye my heart 

                my broken heart 

                my aching heart 

                my breaking heart 

 

Goodbye   my bro  ken

 

 

 

Antonia Alexandra Klimenko was first introduced on the BBC and to the literary world by the legendary James Meary Tambimuttu of Poetry London–-publisher of T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, Henry Miller and Bob Dylan, to name a few.  his death, it was his friend, the late great Kathleen Raine, who took an interest in her writing and encouraged her to publish.  A nominee for the Pushcart Prize, The Best of the Net, and a former San Francisco Poetry Slam Champion, she is widely published. Her work has appeared in (among others) XXI Century World Literature (which she represents France) and Maintenant : Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art archived at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. and New York’s Museum of Modern Art. She is the recipient of two grants: one from Poets in Need, of which Michael (100 Thousand Poets for Change) Rothenberg is a co-founder; the second—the 2018 Generosity Award bestowed on her by Kathleen Spivack and Joseph Murray for her outstanding service to international writers through SpokenWord Paris where she is Writer/ Poet in Residence.  Her collected poems On the Way to Invisible is forthcoming in 2024.