My death is not a song by Mohammed Moussa

My death is not a song
Mohammed Moussa

My death is not a song
For you to sing
Is not a March for
you to walk in
Is not a shirt for you to wear
Is not a road that carries my name
Will the world forget
Where I’m from
I don’t care
My stolen life is not
an abandoned
City besieged
by a weeping sea
I can hear you singing
I can hear you dancing
Remember not my name
But the names of my kids
who you killed while
they were carrying my death
Or the land that you’ve turned into
a graveyard of broken souls
and mass graves.

SELECTED BY GEORGE ABRAHAM

Every poet in the west owes Gaza an impossible debt: a world of living and potential for the many multiverses stolen from Palestinians by the Zionist entity. Our governments not only fund this genocide but profit off of it.

This poem, by Mohammed Moussa from the habayeb at Gaza Poets Society, gets me to seriously and materially ask: what does mourning Gaza even mean when I come from a society who writes about Ghazzawi Palestinians as if they are already dead?

What can I further sacrifice to end this genocide? How many books by western writers pave over and un-write the voices of Gaza?

If you, dear reader, scan your bookshelf and own such books, consider buying at least 1 ebook from @gazapoets for every book that has come at the expense of their annihilation, or published by a press who has done nothing to materially support Palestinians (e.g. PACBI pledges, financially significant support to people). What will it take for us to divest from this colonial death machine?

ABOUT GEORGE ABRAHAM

George Abraham (they/هو) is a Palestinian American poet, essayist, critic, performance artist. They are the author of When the Arab Apocalypse Comes to America (Haymarket, 2026) and Birthright (Button Poetry, 2020), which won the Arab American Book Award and was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. They are the executive editor of Mizna, and co-editor of HEAVEN LOOKS LIKE US: Palestinian Poetry (Haymarket, 2025). They are a graduate of Northwestern’s Litowitz MFA+MA program, and teach at Amherst College as a Writer-in-Residence.