My California
By Beau Beausoleil
The highway signs
try to comfort us
they name
our distance
from the killing that
sweeps over and
under Gaza
We cannot shoulder
the lethal hailstorm
of hardened thought
More than once
we feel for the keys
in our pocket
and study the buried
sky between us
There is a coast road
in Gaza
that is part of every
changing shoreline
of tidal grief
The fog this morning
in my part of San Francisco
hides us from one another
and we feel by turns
lost/invisible/in hiding
and finally alone
Beau Beausoleil is a poet and activist based in San Francisco, California. His three most recent poetry collections are: The Killing Of George Floyd (Intermittent Press 2023), Poems For Ukraine (Barley Books (UK) 2023) and War News - A free poetry e-book concerning the war in Gaza, which has been published by Agitate! Journal. A translation of War News into Croatian is soon to appear online.
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