Two Poems by Sean Eaton (About Place J.)

Median Witness

I eke out a vampire’s existence at present, awake in
the indigo velvet of night, a witness to death
and destruction, alluvial plumes. The gingkoes birth fans
of flame and black smokescreens. I skinny-dip in
crumbed memories and mistakes of record-keeping.
Everything is Orientalized in the high ridge of the score,
duduk and Desi drums paraded as Arab-indigenous.
In Poland, the plane goes down over forest,
and the President and his Cabinet transform into mist.
Now, hegemonic caesura is obscured with rote verse;
like fragments of stardust tar-pitting my veins,
this buckshot of condescension accelerates Westward.
Lambs bound and stumbling, running three-legged races.
GoFundMes to bribe the guards of the abattoir.
Missiles of disingenuous precision die for love
and kiss until their lips are raw. Hope lies across the border,
a flight into Egypt if only they can pay, but with my thirty
silver spent already I doom them all to biochemical rape.
Pour into my blood a little of your heat,
you beautiful, Rubenesque god of destruction:
I feed when you feed on the blood and the marrow,
taking their screams and their oil as sustenance. Digital
evidence is preserved and debased, decried and erased.
The Orient is commodified and sold piecemeal, kosher.
Rearranging paint cans while the whole vessel is scuttled.
In Iran, the helicopter goes down into mist,
and the President and his aides are reborn as long shadows.
The arrest warrants are only for leaves on the tree,
we must attack the root of the problem.
We are trying to live, though we don’t know why anymore.
Flour and hope of escape sustain, even when both are miserly
wrought. This tarnished brass key will unlock the future.
Pour into my blood a little of your heat,
Gazan Sun, O Palestinian Sun.


Published by About Place Journal, official literary journal of the Black Earth Institute, Oct. 2024 issue.
Note: The title is a pun on the term "median voter".
Sources of Quotations:
--Lines 19, 33: Atlas, Natacha, “Soleil d’Egypte.” Ayeshteni, 2001. Translated from the original French.
--Line 30: Anonymous Gazan mother, paraphrased.





At the Five-Month Mark,

the buildings all dance like orchards in storm-winds,
their broad boughs of windows giving way to the gale.
Bitter harvests of concrete are picked up by hand,
pale stone-fruit of bone packed tidily in bushels. As
famine looms in the North, Gazans eat grass and drink

polluted water to survive. Animal feed replaces flour
and grass soup becomes delicacy. Bombs are the totality
of music. The dead are abandoned to feralized cats.
The dust-bejeweled pray in Arabic, plead in English.
They live-tweet the tanks and mortar shells, old friends.

The hospitals surrender their machinery to gravity,
while refugee tents are stripped down for menstrual pads.
Every reporter is picked off by snipers. The UN is attacked
without repercussion. Throngs of the starving are murdered
for rare flour. Fishermen are fired on for rejecting starvation.

It is a necessary cleansing, yes, but not ethnic in nature,
for these are not human beings. Snipers corral hundreds
in half-destroyed hospitals. Tactical whales chase krill
from Safe Zone to Safe Zone. Pregnant women fall dead
in their tracks. The passive voice is abused discriminately.

Multiple billions in tax-dollars enable this. The President
of America signs checks carte blanche. Armaments ship-
ments sent out every thirty-six hours. Hundreds of food-
trucks stopped dead at the borders by civilian Settlers
with inflatable bounce-castles. The President of America

fights Drought with Fire. The American President is blood-
thirsty, senile. He refuses to change course. The ear-
plugging Loyalists think they’re supporting a moral volcano.
Thirty-four-thousand prayers become smoke. Fourteen-
thousand songs forever unfinished. The living are reduced

to living like cavemen. All universities bombed, all archives
destroyed. South Africa takes the First World to court.
The Fourth Estate only publishes Israel’s defense. The US
vetoes a third Ceasefire vote. The UK abstains. The UN seems
useless. The World’s Most Moral Army steals women’s lingerie,

films themselves humiliating their carapaced captives.
Nothing more than stark-ribbed chattel, they have the
Star of the Master Race burnt onto their skin. Tough guys,
Settlers, and successful so far, supported by every country
that matters—the ruling class, with their delusions of grandeur.

From their colonial biers the vampires maintain hegemony.
They alternate air-dropping dumb bombs with food-aid,
a sumptuous innovation in psychological warfare. Two now
have burnt themselves alive out of protest. Through our
screens we keep screaming. The muezzins are all silent.

In a mendacious PR move, America will build a new port for
Gaza instead of just freeing the idling trucks. The concrete
will take thirty days to congeal, but Israel is already selling
the offshore oil rights. These wars, when you look at them,
are all about resources, and who is going to control them.



---Published by About Place Journal, official publication of the Black Earth Institute, October 2024
https://aboutplacejournal.org/issues/shaping-destiny/before/sean-eaton/
---posted here Jan. 2, 2025


Sources of Quotations:
Lines 4-5: Haq, Sana Noor, & Rahimi, Rosa. “‘We are dying slowly:’ Palestinians are eating grass and drinking polluted water as famine looms across Gaza.” CNN, https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/30/middleeast/famine-looms-in-gaza-israel-war-intl/i...

Lines 16-17: Crosby, Seth. Tweeted Octo. 13, 2023, later deleted. Twitter, https://twitter.com/tteclod/status/1712938899633250696

Line 35: This is a term commonly used by Western journalists and politicians for the Israeli army.

Lines 49-50: Maathai, Warangi. Twitter, https://twitter.com/nyeusi_waasi/status/1768716270088675377