The Only Other Option: Leave the Area

Strange bowls tied upright with bed springs
against the backdrop of village wire.

Sabiha waters plants
in her West Bank garden.

Rows of flowers, pots of teargas canisters
grow for her dead son.

She does not raise onions or peppers,
just hillside reds in remnants of sprays.

Eileen Cleary is a nurse and poet living in Massachusetts. She is a graduate of Lesley University’s MFA program and her work appears or is forth coming in recent issues Apeiron, Bird’s Thumb, and Naugatuck River Review. She is a 2016 Pushcart nominee.