The Pedestal Magazine > Archives > ISSUE THIRTY-SIX: Oct-Dec (06) > Poetry >Liz Gallagher - Episode iii: The Day the Shelling Started

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for Zena el-Khalil


The doctors said her tumors had shrunk. A wedding
took place across the street. Everyone stopped at the red

lights. She wants to cash checks, stop the mosquitoes
coming in the window and prevent small children

from wading through garbage heaps. She lists by candlelight
the things she doesn´t want to leave behind: the doodles

she drew on the balcony after the break-up, family pictures,
love letters, glitter and paint, her Siamese who cowers

in an empty milk crate stained with vomit. Plain wooden
caskets are just big enough to hold babies. They lie

alongside a white freezer truck. An artist in Lebanon ties
a microphone to his balcony to record the “Summer Rain"

of bombs breaking the sound barrier, he plays the trumpet
in the background and sketches drawings in the hushed seconds

of a starry night. An ex-hostage dreams of the bloodletting
being over. He imagines one day sitting under a magnificent

oak and letting the beauty of the place soak into him.









Liz Gallagher lives in the Canary Islands, Spain. She teaches English in the Foreign Language Department of Las Palmas University and is currently completing a PhD on “Online Learning." Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Centrifugal Eye, Wicked Alice, and Mannequin Envy, as well as a recent anthology of writing from women entitled Eve…a celebration of creative women. "The Day the Shelling Started" is part of a series of sixteen "war observer" poems related to war in Lebanon.
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