To whom shall I lift up my prayers

for the children of the living,

whose laughter descends from the clouds?

Empire is efficient

at greed, at weaponizing belief,

systematic.

It can make you less than human to justify

its brutality towards you.

It can make you less than human to accept its brutality

towards others.

On the opening night of the 2024 “Global Black Feminisms Forum: Building Black Feminist Worlds,” the first of its kind in Barbados, Amina Doherty offered a politics of gathering punctuated by rituals of speaking and movement.

image after image of ash, of smoke

of babies broken and split

of mothers wailing and wailing

and I refuse to look away,

refuse to give away

my humanity

The oppression of the Palestinian people is wrapped up in the oppression of marginalized communities all throughout the world and squarely all the communities I am apart of. black, woman, queer, from a small Caribbean island.

This is the danger of white supremacy and colonialism, it oppresses many of us in many forms, all insidious. Be not deluded.

This is a place of terrible things.

We are terrible things.

When I look around me, I do not know what to save first,

in my dreams I see everything burn in the fire,

I save nothing, not even myself.

There was once a girl whose father had heavy hands,

Now all the heavy hands in the world couldn't hurt her, move her, sway her.

All the lovers are dead in Gaza.

I was made with the heart of a poet and so,

all I know to write

Is of love and flowers,

gentle touch and betrayal.

Ashes unnatural, missing marks of time

names scribbled hopefully instead

to be recited over and over by the living’s

attempts at resurrection

The heat erupts on my skin

into buried bodies,

rubble engulfing their delicate bones

caring not if they are young or old

panicked echoes of their last breath,

chanting freedom songs,

trapped, their ashes now rise

haunting us all

Witnessing the Palestinian genocide on this large a scale and remembering that this is how they see all of us . . . .

What will happen when we become useless to Western interests? 

What will become of our culture? 

Because they will take our land and our lives and build memorials generations later to admit guilt. 

Or they will let the ocean swallow us up and say we weren’t loud enough at policy conferences.

After the damage has been done, they will give us a day to recognize the sins of the past. 

All with the intention to repeat history. 

The moon, glowing in full, still inspires awe

But then I wonder,

Can they see the moon in Gaza?

Or are the skies too choked with smoke?

Is its glow overpowered by the flashing of bombs?

Not only are we the waves, but

we are the storm itself.

It is we who have storm winds spinning in our lungs

It is we who have salt stinging our eyes

It is we who have choppy seas nauseating our bellies.

It is we who are coming for those who think

their peace matters more

their peace requires violence

their violence is justified

their violence is the only one justified.

A new day

To fight

To light the darkness

The fox.

Who steals into the fowl coop,

will meet his match,

when the flock turns,

to see his hands, wet and crimson.

Reinforcing this idea of resistance through art and dress is the headscarf that she’s wearing — a keffiyeh, which is a symbol of Palestinian resistance, revolution, unity, and solidarity.

We will not look away. We must raise up a cry of transnational feminist solidarity, a polyphony of rage and dissent, against the ongoing violence against Palestinians by the settler colony of Israel and its allies.