By Allie Kerper

Say ‘Free Palestine’.
Say it at work, in
school, on the street. Act
like there’s no more time,
like we’re way past ‘First they came for’,
like there’s a genocide.

Say ‘genocide’.
Say it’s happening to Palestinians.
Do not use metaphor
to describe its perpetration.
Do not waste time.
Consider what action

to take, then take that action.
This is no fantasy genocide.
What you do this time,
for Palestine,
is what you’d have done in
history, for

those the Nazis targeted for
their detractions
from German purification,
for whom ‘genocide’
was given breath, and Palestine
stolen to give Britain time

to forget the times
it maintained quotas for
Jewish migrants. Palestine
as a salve for how their actions
paved roads to genocide.
Then and now we say, in

voices thick with grief and desperation,
it’s time
to end the genocide
that’s been happening for
generations, acting
in our name to destroy Palestine.

Israel is committing genocide in
Palestine. We say it’s time
for action.

Allie Kerper is an Edinburgh-based poet, editor and emerging trade union activist. Her most recent poetry collection is Pale Hairs Reach Between Us, is published with Blue Diode Publishing.