wildscape. literary journal

biblicism
by Jonathan Chan

while reading Genesis

after Noor Hindi and Natalie Wee

colonisers read the bible.
it is a seduction, the promise
of a dispensation of land. it
excuses violence of even the most
sadistic form. does the Lord will
the bombing of schools and the
judicial approval of rape? i read
how the dove returns with a
single plucked olive. a theology
of empire is untethered. logics
froth at the mouths of politicians.
table for the agenda a declaration
of all that is unhinged. how covenantal,
when the lines fall in pleasant places,
bisecting the bodies of Palestinian
Christians. Zionists marvel that they
even exist. it is the weakest politics
of identification. when the blood cries
out from the soil, those in denial
cover their ears. noise suppression
is a coping mechanism. a flag of Israel
hangs outside a steakhouse in Texas.
an airshow proceeds in the hangars
of Singapore. there is a single spring
of water in the wilderness. it shall be
lapped by no Palestinian tongue. their
descendants are the dust of the earth.
say occupation. say dispossession. say
complicity. say liberation. say that
shame is too awful to be deliberate,
encountered again and again. say the
lightness that needs to be carried into
every future. say the love that ends an
apartheid and restores exiles to a home.
say the prayer that resists the whine and
begs torrents of justice to roll.

about the author // Jonathan Chan