Political Poetry #1: Neighborhood: A Tribute to Bisan Ouda.

Meet Bisan Ouda.

Or more popularly known as Wizard Bisan online. A Palestinian press journalist currently in Gaza fighting for her life to report the human rights abuses occurring there. At only 25 years young, she begins every video with “Hello I am Bisan and I am still alive.” Documenting too many tragedies to count, suffering from displacement and illness herself, she still finds time to record and document her and her community’s suffering for the world to see.

In an Instagram post from Bisan on January 6th, 91 days of brutal attacks and assaults on all aspects of Palestinian life, she makes this Instagram post:

“I grew up believing in the importance of realistic stories and documenting our daily challenges, in bringing about change and completely shaping the world!

I started writing realistic short stories ten years ago! My people were the same heroes of my stories, but today I live with my people in exceptional circumstances!! When I talk to them and listen to their stories, I not only hear about cutting off electricity, blockades on products and trade, unemployment, poverty, and economic and health crises, but I hear about genocide! Yes, genocide... We are placed inside a box that was supposed to be our homeland, as it has been for thousands of years, and we are deprived of food, drink, and medicine, and we are subjected to horrific killing with the latest weapons of the greedy, lying world in which we live.

My role and the role of the rest of the journalists in Gaza is to document our stories and the stories of our people, and your role is to put an end to this genocide.

*Do not despair... Be stronger and demand a ceasefire, you are our only hope.*”

In addition to my passion for human rights and international politics, I am a lifelong poet. I believe poetry can be a powerful tool for healing trauma and navigating life. As such, I am in the very final stages of publishing my first poetry book. Titled, “Where the Spirit Meets the Bone,” I write about the human experience including everything from heartbreak, grief, trauma, with a few poems centered around community and human rights that has inspired this series called Political Poetry.  

Neighborhood: A Tribute to Bisan Ouda.  

“There’s a new family in the neighborhood,  

with beautiful brown skin, curly hair. 

And around the mom’s neck a keffiyeh,  

neat and clean and tucked with care.  

You ask about their home. 

They say you wouldn’t recognize it.  

It’s filled with olive trees, and a big blue sea,  

but one that is not yet free.  

You ask about their childhood.  

They say “short lived,” 

a fight for survival,  

full of songs of resistance.  

How do you welcome that to your neighborhood?  

It’s love thy neighbor, no? 

Even if thy neighbor is from across the sea?  

What about welcoming with compassion, sympathy?  

With patience, because time is a gift few receive.  

What about with nothing less, than sheer, unabashed, humanity?” 

- Alyssa Hockett