A plume of smoke, visible at a distance
In which people burn.—George Oppen

Plumes

Love, can I call you that, you called me that the other night, Love, I couldn’t move today, or only sank, fell, falling. Today I slept until I couldn’t and looked for your call. Your message woke me. I replied. Twice, worried you hadn’t gotten the first. And you replied, and I thought, What folly. I cleared and fell asleep again. I looked for you online. Friends post pictures of Gaza in pieces, people in bits. The skyline in plumes. Plume, a pretty word, but who can afford it? I click through the OED, arranged in pixels on my screen. Regarding the souls of poets, Plato said, “Arrayed as they are in the plumes of rapid imagination, they speak truth.” Beholding the Angels Life and Death, Longfellow wrote of “somber houses hearsed with plumes of smoke.” In “The Exile,” Ibrahim Nasrallah, an exile, writes, “Poets surround me like the fruit of regret.” If we began as light, we became flesh and have become information. Light unto sensor into bytes. Digits, pixels. Our daily bread. The news feed: Omar al-Masharawi, eleven months, dead of burns, wrapped in white, borne upon his father’s arms, whose fingers splay across the shroud, steady and soft. More photos. In Gaza City, Jabaliya, more shrouds. Charred blocks in Khan Younis, Beit Lahiya. The dead, the dying. Rubble, stalks of rebar, ash and limbs. Columns of smoke gore the air, choking daylight. Missiles from a distance. And from a distance, plumes.

by Arash Saedinia
from Rattle #54, Winter 2016

The poem about Gaza was written by an Iranian-American artist and educator in 2016.

Here are some 2018 facts from Amnesty International:

As of October, 150 Palestinians had been killed, 10,000 had been injured, “including 1,849 children, 424 women, 115 paramedics and 115 journalists. Of those injured, 5,814 were hit by live ammunition.” The death toll rose by early December to 175 and by the end of the year to an alleged 220, and those shot in the legs are by now at least 6,392.

One Israeli soldier has been killed and one injured.

Any argument in favor of self-defense has to be abandoned here:https://www.juancole.com/2019/01/against-humanity-protesters.html

The Human Rights and Gender Justice Law Clinic (HRGJ) at the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law just submitted a human rights abuse report to the UN about 45 children being killed during the Right of Return Marches since last March. The report notes that of the 56 Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces and settlers in the OPT during 2018, a total of 45 children were killed in the Gaza Strip since March 30, according to evidence collected by DCIP. In the overwhelming majority of cases, DCIP was able to confirm children did not present any imminent, mortal threat or threat of serious injury when killed by Israeli forces.

Photographs today are industrial plumes, not the plumes of war and occupation. Music here: