Tag: palestine

Book Review: compost your despair by hayden dansky

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Book Review: compost your despair by hayden dansky

A BOOK REVIEW BY LIZA SPARKS

Compost Your Despair is Hayden Dansky’s love letter to Palestine, community organizers, to the “queer and weird and trans and disabled,” to the “dark and indigenous,” to “those of us who live in liminal spaces, or are kin to it,” to their past self, to anyone who feels empathy, anyone with a heartbeat.

The speaker in these poems writes with a fierce urgency that begs us to pay attention and asks us to move our bodies towards action.

In “Now That I Have a Voice,” the speaker defiantly asserts:

So let them
Burn me
with the rest of them
Burn me like they did
my ancestors before time and place
made me white
Burn me like the heathen they call
me for my love, desire, joy
Burn me with the rest because
now that I have a voice
I will never close
my mouth

These poems tumble down the page like spoken word and it does feel like Dansky is speaking just to us. They capture our attention. They invite us in to the prayer. This poetry is a communal act—a protest poetry spoken on the street.

They write in, “Until They Hear Us:”

What else can we do
besides scream from every corner

There is not a lot of excess in these poems; there is not flowery language, sentimentality, romanticization of struggle. They write with a conversational language that seeks to be understood. In “Climate” they write:

it really, really matters how we treat
each other

There is the examination of complexity and Dansky struggles with their own positionality of privilege and oppression. They write:

Peace is a process of
relationship to self
just as much as
relationship to other.

They write, in regards to the ongoing genocide in Gaza,

I will scream that this is not
my Judaism.

These poems demand a megaphone.

There is not the promise of peace or justice, but an impulse towards it. In “Until They Hear Us,” the speaker repeats, “I will try” and “I can try.” It is a vulnerable and humble sentiment. In times like these, what else is there to do but try? Trying is the first step towards action.

There is a force in these poems that is driven by the musicality of repetition, like the drumbeat of “Burn me” in the final stanza of “Now That I Have a Voice.” The speaker is not afraid to write in defiance of powers that will oppress them and the people they love, and they will say it again.

In the poem, “Climate” the speaker struggles with the power of words. What can words actually do in “a burning world.” They write, “How can I trust these words.” Yet, Dansky is driven to speak, to write, and to share. There is a deep desire to be heard. There is a fierce drive to express.

Author Hayden Dansky

These poems bring to mind the Audre Lorde quote: “I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.” With that same sentiment—Dansky must speak, must write, must share.

There’s a hunger in the speaker to understand the past and the present, to make sense of the trauma and their position and responsibility.

In “Nex” there is a firm defiance against the powers of hate:

Our bodies are resistance.
Our love is survival.
Our identities are our anchors,
always in transition.

“Nex” is addressed to Nex Benedict, a 16-year-old non-binary student, youth, and precious soul who died as the result of anti-LGBQTIA+ policies. Dansky’s poems do not exist merely on the page, but are in deep conversation with the world around them.

And although the world around them is apocalyptic, there is hope in these poems. In “A Pandemic Note to the Creative Organizers,” the speaker writes:

You are not alone.
When you listen
you will remember
you never have been.

and in “A Pandemic Note to Self,” the speaker asserts:

Fall into the earth like it’s your home
It has always been.

Dansky’s impulse towards social justice is driven by a deep love for their fellow humans and for the world. In “Gaza” they write:

called by a deep love
of all humanity
of a belief
that nobody will be free
until we all are.

Compost Your Despair asks the reader to look at their own privilege and positionality—What drives you? What moves you? What do you love?

In “Pride,” Dansky reminds us that

Pride is not complacency

our lives are choices
and we are choosing to stay

Dansky’s poetry asks the reader: What are you choosing to do with your life? What are you choosing to do with your voice?

compost your despair

BY HAYDEN DANSKY

AVAILABLE NOW!

Liza Sparks (she/her) is a student in the 2025-2026 Poetry Collective at The Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, Colorado. Liza follows her literary obsessions and collects books the way toddlers collect rocks and pinecones (beloved friends, sacred treasures). She is a Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net nominee.

A Chorus of Mourning Echoing Out Toward Mecca | Ted Vaca

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Image: WEFAIL

A Chorus of Mourning Echoing Out Toward Mecca

BY TED VACA

the chosen people
god’s blessed
people

brutalized attacked and slandered
beaten throughout centuries
wandering through
a mist of sorrow
through world wars
through a cemetery
the size of the Sea of Reeds

then blessed by God
and nations and given
back their homeland
holy land
returned to Zion
oh Israel oh holy land
oh El Elohe Yisrael
oh The Mighty One
God of Israel

how terrifying you’ve become
how brutal your power how punishing
your vengeance how bloody your hands

you’ve let loose
the leash of the angels
of the apocalypse
upon your neighbors
and upon their land
God’s hell has risen

now the broken people
now the occupied
the scattered descendants
of the conquered bombed
to dust their hospitals
their places of worship
their schools their people
their children their lineage
their line of hope obliterated
in the constant barrage
of revenge

only the law of God
matters El Elohe Yisrael
only the law of Israel
above the laws of men
of war of nations
above the internationals
from above comes the law
from above the blessing
of violations of wanton cruelty
from above the blessings
of starvation the blessings
of suffering the blessings
of obliteration of the grave
of the dark

terror begets terror begets terror
begets the horror show begets
infinite suffering a sea of tears
a grand canyon of corpses

for your neighbors
not mercy but broken bones
not compassion but severed bodies
for your neighbors there is no salt
no bread no wine but disease
starvation and poisoned water

oh Palestine the world watches
and not much is done and what is
done seems as spit into the wind
as spit on to the face of Palestine

Palestine no mother’s day
Palestine no fourth of July
Palestine no apple pie
no answers from Salat no call from God
no response from the deepening chorus
of mourning echoing out toward Mecca
and bouncing off the Kaaba

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Ted Vaca is a Denver area based poet and performer.  He began writing steadily in the late 1980’s in his home state of California.  He has been published in numerous publications and has self-published two chapbooks.  He is a member of the 1995 Asheville National Slam Poetry Championship team.  He is a founding member of The Mercury Cafe Poetry Slam, (Denver, CO.) established in 2000, and ongoing since then.  He is the coach of the 2006 Mercury Cafe Slam Championship team.  He has hosted countless poetry readings and slams and special events throughout his 35-plus years in catering toward poetic pursuits.

Ted is an award winner of Colorado’s Lulu award for accomplishments in poetry and The James Ryan Morris Tombstone award.

Ted has worked for Art from Ashes, a Colorado based not for profit that encourages and teaches healing through art therapy, catering to youth in illness and at risk.