Lynch

There is no “ch” in Hebrew.
Yet lynch it was:
four tough guys from the south
and a black man. “We thought
he was a terrorist.” And that’s what
the newspapers said. Four men arrested
for “doing a lynch.” The “ch” marked
by a makeshift diacritic. The refugee’s body
marked with gun-chinks,
bruises from benches used as weapons.

Maya Wahrman reads “Lynch”:

Maya Wahrman is a bilingual case manager at the Latin American Legal Defense and Education Fund, serving Hedgepeth-Williams Middle School in Trenton, New Jersey. She graduated from Princeton’s department of history, with certificates in creative writing and near eastern studies, and is beginning a masters in social work this fall at Rutgers University. Wahrman has had opinion pieces published in the History News Network and the English and Hebrew editions of Haaretz, and poetry published in various publications, including Lilith Magazine, Fifth Wednesday Journal, The Copperfield Review, and the Jewish Currents poetry anthology Urge. She can be followed on her website, mayawahrman.com.