This is the desert scrubland where shepherds’
lives are hard enough, the mountain plateau
of stones, shrubs and searing summer heat,
where families fight to save ancestral land
and caves and sheep. Sun-bleached hills
where they’re banned from digging wells,
from accepting gifts of Spanish solar panels.
Where parents have to shield their children
from settlers throwing stones. Where,
inside tents, daughters pour sage tea
from charred metal pots. My sheep,
the shepherd says, I had to sell off half.
I can’t feed them all and all my family too.
We’re not leaving. They can come and see.
We have a lawyer, and some of us no longer
live in caves, we’ve put down concrete.
—From Adler’s current work-in-progress, “Dare I Call You
Cousin,” about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in collaboration with
Israeli artists, photographer
Michael Fattal and videographer Yossi Yacov.
Notice: Photograph is protected by international
copyright law.
“South Hebron Hills, West Bank” by
Frances Payne Adler
|
Photograph by
Tey Roberts
|
is the author of five books: two poetry collections, Making
of a Matriot (Red Hen Press) and Raising The Tents (Calyx Books);
and three collaborative books and exhibitions with photographer
Kira Carrillo Corser
that have shown in galleries and state capitol buildings
across the country, and in the U.S. Senate in Washington, D.C.
Adler also co-edited, with Debra Busman and Diana Garcia, Fire and Ink: An Anthology
of Social Action Writing (University of Arizona Press), which won the 2009 ForeWord
Book of the Year Award for Anthologies.
The poems, “Camera” and “Battle,” are from Adler’s current
work-in-progress, “Dare I Call You Cousin,” about the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, in collaboration with Israeli artists,
photographer Michal Fattal and videographer Yossi Yacov. “Evolution” is
from Making of a Matriot.
Adler, professor emerita and founder of the Creative Writing and Social Action Program
at California State University Monterey Bay, lives in Portland, Oregon.