"One Playbook" by Liam Al-Hindi

Image Credit: Rueben McChristian, obtained and licensed through Unsplash

One Playbook

A flashbang can set fire to black denim jeans
as quickly as a colonizer’s molotov will swallow a date palm
that was planted in the West Bank fifty years ago.

Tear gas is illegal to use in war,
yet it dissolves our lungs like the boot polish
that eats the tongues of bystanders.

The trundling rubber of tanks and trucks
flattens za’atar thyme sprigs like bone.

You need to understand
that they shoot us in the head with steel stun grenades
in the East and the West,
that a dozen protesters are trapped in an alleyway
bordered by unmarked vans
as entire countries are kettled between sanctions and starvation,
that all attackers and occupiers read from the same playbook
on how to maintain their territories,

that Gaza and Portland and Hebron and Minneapolis are neighbors
confined by the same zip ties:
cheap, and most importantly,
plastic.

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Liam Al-Hindi (he/him) is a graduate of the University of Nebraska Omaha, with a BA in English and Creative Writing. He writes in order to engage with his movement through this world as a neurodivergent and biracial Arab, and uses this lens in an attempt to grab hold of whatever can be used to escape the violence of our present circumstances. His other work can be found in UNO’s undergraduate literary journal, 13th Floor Magazine.