On Purim, I’m Re-reading June Jordan

Photo by Corleone Brown on Unsplash

Ms. June Jordan begins by throwing her hands up: I didn’t know and nobody told me and what / could I do or say, anyway? And she ends with the title of her poem, ‘Apologies to All the People in Lebanon’: I’m sorry. / I really am sorry. In between is the apology itself, details of the 1982 Lebanon war. She repeats the word ‘you’ and ‘your’ 22 times, speaking directly to expelled Palestinians. So too, does she speak directly to…