Catapult Alumni | Poetry

The Pine Trees

This poem was written by Gabrielle Spear in a 12-Month Poetry Collection Generator taught by Angel Nafis

The Jewish National Fund planted pine trees to cover up over 530 Palestinian villages demolished by Zionist forces in 1947-1948. The pine trees were intended to make the new Ashkenazi immigrants feel at home.


with every crevice desecrated

        

            in your ruins

      with our breath

  

                pioneer fantasy

              bloomed deception

            grafted indigeneity

               foliage paid in blood


but do not deny

  

        to their knees

 then yank an eden                    

        from the rubble

                  then grow a welcome

      

      still

    their cartography

making a hearth of this arid landscape

 

   they fear

our invasive ancestry

our diseased chests

    for even as we disguise

      their crimes

            

    

          our flames  

        won’t be contained


*

Gabrielle Spears collection Doorways Doorwaysimiryangomeans doors, gates, and lineages depending on the inflection and context. In this collection, nearly everyone is complicit and capable of transformative possibilities: lineage is both a site of nation building and a doorway towards solidarity, god is both the survivor of state violence and the mastermind behind it, witness is survival and surveillance at once.