Poem: Calling Congress

Hello, my name is Rachel and I am your constituent in New Orleans, Louisiana. I’m calling on you today to support an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. I’m going to keep it short and sweet because I heard that you really just keep a tally.

Hello, my name is Rachel and I am your constituent in New Orleans. Please stop this genocide. I’m begging you.

Hello, my name is Rachel and I am your constituent in Bulbancha. I keep crying in sharp bursts. Why do we settlers worship death?

Hello, my name is Shame and I am your constituent. My voice is hoarse on your answering machine. Do you really decide who will live and who will die by tally?

Hello, my name is Rachel. I was too young to vote when we marched against the war in San Francisco. Hundreds of thousands in the streets. Why weren’t we counted?

Hello, my name is רחל. I am your constituent from Vilna. Can you tell me why my people left home and what they carried with them? What fear made them forget their language?

Hello, O Great Crusader, can you hear me over the drums? My name is Repentance. When the holy war is over, do you picture me in hell?

Hello, my name is Sorrow. Will you listen if I rend my garments? Chain myself across your doorstep? Would you hear me more clearly if I accepted Christ into my heart?

Hello, my name is Lulav. I’m calling you from my sukkah — shelter in the fields. I am no nation’s constituent. I am a prayer. I am a heartbeat.

Hello, my name is Rise Up. I pound my chest. I heave. I reach my hand out to the counted and uncounted, linking arms, louder, louder now.

Poetry Editor Alicia Ostriker comments: The cleverness of this poem is equal to the present and past suffering that it implicitly evokes, and the frustration of being unheard in a world where protests and deaths are merely “tallied.” Cleverness partly takes the sting off. But by the end of this poem — unpredicted yet inevitable — I was in tears.  

Note: Bulbancha is a pe-colonial Choctaw name for the city we call New Orleans. It means “place of many tongues,” multi-ethnic from the beginning.