Remembering a 15 Year Old Palestinian Womanin Prison Chained to the Bed Springs
She Had Refused to Stop Singing

Marilyn Buck

1988

Chained for singing
clear minor notes
welling from sweet young throats
and mouths which have tasted
the tightness of screaming silences
and still songs soar
skyward
reeling remembering revealing

Women sing songs
reeling
remembering
revealing

lullabies lovesongs
blues songs
chants cantillating songs
of exiled lives
and martyrs' death
Voices search out sounds
not yet noted on bars
not yet ordered on scales
they resound through zionist hell
demanding Palestine be free

Summer 1988

This poem appeared in
Conspiracy of Voices (1990),
Hauling Up The Morning (1990),
Sojourner: The Women's Forum(1991),
and Wild Poppies (2004)