For their poetry contest, Shooter Literary Magazine wanted “a sharply observed appeal to both the head and the heart,” and I knew immediately that I had the perfect poem, “both compellingly timely and universal,” as the editor described it when she let me know that I had won the 2024 Shooter Poetry Competition!

This poem was conceived after the brave assembly and violent dismantling of a pro-Palestinian protest camp here on the campus of the University of Arizona, amidst a tsunami of student protests across the country and then the world. I kept seeing and hearing echoes of other protests and other times, including some that I’d taken part in; couldn’t stop thinking about the genealogies of protest movements, how they learn from each other, inspire each other, century after century. As I told my student when she found me scribbling madly away under a tree on campus, I don’t always write poetry, but when I do, there’s a conflict in the Arab world, whether the 2008-2009 Operation Cast Lead, aka “Hannukah War,” in Gaza, or terrorism rocking the Arab diaspora in Europe. I’m usually more comfortable in prose, but sometimes my emotional state can only be described in verse.

This poem emerged from a series of TV news and public radio stories, Facebook Reels and social media posts, that came together with what I remembered observing in other waves of protest, from the Egyptian Revolution to Occupy Wall Street to the Ukrainian Maidan to Ferguson Black Lives Matter and returning again and again to Gazans. Every new story I heard would trigger the memory of a dozen earlier explications.

To the reporter on the Columbia campus
Overlooking the Liberated Zone,
He was inspired, he said,
At seven years old on Tahrir Square
Cairo, Egypt, 2011

…

They raised their Black fists in Ferguson
As the Panthers did, 1968
And learned to protect themselves from tear gas
With milk and onions and oven mitts
From Twitter #FromGazaToFerguson

…

Read the complete poem here on the website of Shooter Literary Magazine.

I’m grateful to Shooter for choosing me again — coincidentally, both pieces touch on my time in Egypt.