They Are Running at Bullets by Frank Dullaghan

As of Friday night, the Gaza health ministry said that three Palestinians had been killed, all of them shot in the head, and nearly 1,000 had been wounded, 178 by live ammunition. The New York Times Evening Briefing, Friday, April 27, 2018.

They are running at bullets, collecting them.
There are no other prizes in this place –
the future is too far a road;
the horizon a fence, a checkpoint,
a gun.
They pin bullets on the chests like medals.

They are kept, animals in a pen.
(Who cares?)
The soldiers have bigger voices –
they boom in the sky.
(The soldiers laugh – they are well armed
by America.)

They are running at bullets,
it is all they can own – their children
have been dragged into jails.
(The world turns over in sleep.)

They are running at bullets as if they could burst
through walls and bars,
lift the terrorized into their arms.

If they continue
perhaps the world will wonder at their dash,
at the day-after-day small noise
of flesh being ripped apart.

They are blood sacrifices – Arise, cry out in the night:
in the beginning of the watches pour out
thine heart like water before the face of the Lord:
lift up thy hands toward him
for the life of thy young children,
that faint for hunger in the top of every street. *

They are running at bullets believing
that god cannot be as cruel
in heaven as he is on earth.

*Lamintations 2:19, King James Bible

Frank Dullaghan is an Irish poet who lives in Dubai, UAE. He holds an MA with Distinction in Writing (University of South Wales).A fourth collection, Lifting the Latch, due out in May 2018 from Cinnamon Press, UK. He is a children’s poetry judge for the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature since 2013. In 2014 he was commissioned to provide final English translation (from literal translations) of HH Sheikh Mohammed’s poetry, published as Flashes of Verse. In 2016, he published a pamphlet, Secrets of the Body, with Eyeware Publishing. Frank’s poetry has been widely published in journals, including in Poetry Review, PN Review, London Magazine, Nimrod, and Queens Quarterly.

Photo: Donald Giannatti