Protestors on the College Green
Lena Renee Anzarut is a Jewish postgraduate student, currently pursuing…
Protestors on the College Green
by Lena Renee Anzarut
they read history books, ink
still bleeding
and like to pretend
that they would have been righteous,
that they would not have turned away,
would not have lit a torch,
would not have carried a pitchfork,
like they aren’t still carrying pitchforks, even now
like their words don’t echo,
don’t have teeth,
don’t hide knives.
they march through streets paved
with headstones,
and live in houses built from ash,
and like to pretend
that they don’t tread on our bones,
that their neighborhood isn’t a graveyard,
that their hands are clean,
that they don’t live with ghosts,
that they don’t sound like killers.
I hide my Magen David
under my shirt when I pass,
and think of blood staining the streets of Seville,
of hushed prayer and closed curtains and unlit candles,
of mezuzahs concealed under the feet of Virgin Marys
and trials and confessions
and flames licking,
I think of smoke clogging the streets of Aleppo,
of ghosts in Minsk and Bialystok and Warsaw,
of smashed shop windows and broken glass
and bullets and rubble,
and synagogues burning.
I hide my Magen David
when I pass
and think of the unending cost of exile,
drowning in the pages
of this history book, words
bleeding together,
chapters scrawled into skin,
ink etched into bone,
and I can’t pretend
that I’m not haunted by Seville and Aleppo
and Minsk and Bialystok and Warsaw.
I can’t pretend that I haven’t read this book before.
I can’t pretend that I don’t know how it ends.
Visual design by BARD
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Lena Renee Anzarut is a Jewish postgraduate student, currently pursuing a PhD in Anthropology, with a focus on Historical Archaeology. She is deeply interested in history and the ways in which history reverberates through the present. She spends her free time writing poetry and sewing 18th century reenactment clothing. At “Green Golem: The Zionist Literary Magazine”, Lena is the Head Poetry Editor.