Exodus By Rebecca Rogerson

By The Rising Phoenix Review on July 14, 2024

Exodus

Smear anti-ageing serum under eyes. Hope to scare away signs of life.
While kin are dumb bombed

in Gaza in 2024.

A roasted lamb shank bone on a Seder plate calls us to remember enslaved ancestors. How oppression felt. Taste it. Freedom is unleavened.
While we starve our siblings and force survivors into an exodus

in Gaza in 2024.

Walk a lap dog through boreal forests. Spring kisses our noses.
While drones blotch out the sky and terror whirls. Mothers console children who might not be here tomorrow

in Gaza in 2024.

On Pesach, a pot of matzah ball soup boils. Trim toenails. Slip into a hot bath. Try to settle nerves from nagging teenagers to help with Passover dinner.
While white phosphorus burns flesh to the bone of children

in Gaza in 2024.

A loud sigh does not let out the air of Bisan Owda's truths, or release heat from arguments with Jewish peers about threat—perceived, real and manufactured.

While enraged youth, who may or may not have learned about the holocaust, flood campuses and storm city streets in peaceful protest to stop the bloodshed

in Gaza in 2024.

Sleep, kiss eyelids. Slip down into inflamed and grieving hearts. Give us comfort under a magical Pink Moon.

While, tonight, in a well-lit nightmare, lunar sanctifications can never be reached and watermelons loved, freely

in Gaza in 2024.

If I sleep, forgive me while you're dying

in Gaza in 2024.

By Rebecca Rogerson

Biography:

Rebecca Rogerson she/her is a Jewish anti-oppression-based scholar, author, folk herbalist and educator. She lived and worked for two decades in this capacity in South Africa, Botswana and Tkaronto. She taught in the Social Service Worker Program at Seneca College for a decade. She has authored multiple editions of HDEV, a tertiary-level textbook, and co-authored a neuroscientific-based paper about trance. Rebecca has a Master's in interdisciplinary studies focusing on Bungoma healing practices as decolonization praxis. Rebecca adores cultivating plants and channels her rage, despair, and healing efforts into creative writing, amateur opera singing, and disrupting systems of oppression in small but ever-growing ways in unceded Sinixt territory in British Columbia.