My name is Portugal Tuma and today's poem is by the Gazan Palestinian poet

Masab Abu Toha. Masab is a brilliant poet and I follow him on social media and read the things that the New Yorker or the New York Times or other publications published from him.

One of his sons was born in the United States, so he and his family were able to escape from Gaza to safety in Egypt, which must be a crisis to be there, but hearing from family members who are starving.

It's impossible to read this poem today,

the death toll in Gaza is close to 33,000 today.

It's impossible to hear about that slaughter and terror and to read this poem without paying attention to that.

I hold my inadequacy when I read this poem and all I feel like I can do is to amplify poets like Masa Abu Toha to listen to people on the ground

to lament at the geopolitical structures that have these interests in the area that make it so difficult

and are so divisive when it comes to splitting huge populations of people such that it feels like the world is saying this is impossible to contain.

Somehow what we see in the poem is that there is a yearning to say, look at what might be possible to contain in the imagination, in language, in art, not as an easy

solution, but as a painful solution that will demand exhausting Luchad and brother in Yaffa by Masab Abu Toha.

The two walked toward the beach barefoot.

With his soft index finger, Ibrahim starts to draw a map of what used to be their

home. No Ibrahim, the kitchen is a little father to the north.

Oh, don't step over there.

Dad was sleeping there on the couch.

Tourist kids run by flying kites, the waves hit the beach shaded with cloud cover,

the mosque on the hilltop calls for prayer.

Ibrahim and his brother still argue about where their kitchen was.

They both sit on the sand.

Ibrahim takes out a lighter,

wishes he could make tea in their kitchen

...