Negev Varod / Seeing Pink

Mickey L.D. Morgan

The following is an experimental and hopefully screen reader friendly text version of the poem by artist Mickey Morgan.

You call it pink-washing,
like rose colored glasses
cast over the desert
turning the dust thrown
into the ether by stones
flung from small fists by
Democratic™ bombs tossed
from the tippy-top of the
Golan heights into the
depths of the west bank,
turning ash to ash dust to
dust
into cotton candy.

Pink like the aparthied
nation-state of Israel is
the only place in the
blood-bathed middle-east
that won’t eat you,
bones and all,
just for lookin twospiritlesbigaybitrans
genderqueer
aceintersex-

or somethin.
This nation-state is the
only safe haven in this land
of nomad-savages, be
careful, keep mace in your
pocket, the IDF will take
care of any problems
white-functioning bodies may
have. But you should
probably live in
Tel-Aviv
(north, not the ghetto),

just in case.

The haze that washes the
horizon over that city is
so thick, so bright, you
would be forgiven for
thinking it’s early morning
sun kissing the shamayim.
To the heavens, the
assimilated patriarchs
pray: Modeh ani lefanecha
thank God I’m not a Woman
or a Queer or Brown or
Crippled or all of the
above. Thank God (only the
masculine) for cis-gay
Ashkenazis who think
they’re white and that
charity under neoliberalism
isn’t just a fancy way of
saying vaccinated
against our kin.

But what of the bloodlines?
Of the strings between us
tied to the fringes by
we-don’t-remember-who?
Of the crimson mixed with the
toasted minerals of the
desert having flown like
rivers
down the bodies of
children fighting their
great grandparents’ war as
family heirlooms?
Of the
elders, curled into the
crevices of the west bank,
hands clutching a key? Of
Mizrachi and Palestinian
Trannies and Dykes marching
in the street Black Panthers
kin to the freedom fighters
here on Turtle Island
our
many living ancestors
their eyes tasting
pennies dripping down
from a head-wound
worn as tefillin?

A perfect shade of RAGE


Can I finally find
pronouns that fit from
this ancient language of
resistance?

Is revolution a
color of mourning?