In Preparation for Martyrdom
by Edward Salem
I imagine young Katherine Hepburn in Rafah or Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip in an iridescent robe among a swarm of Intifada youths. Katherine Hepburn with infectious pink eye, afraid to shake the hands sprouting out of the raging throng of handsome protesters and dark-skinned resistors.
Kate Hep recognizes in her angelhood their desperate patriotism, freedom fighters not terrorists, she thinks, wishing she could've, in life, made a movie for their cause or, at minimum, led a march like Brando for the Indians and blacks.
Kate Hep smashes her little fist into a mirror and scowls with that prim drawl, "With our souls and blood, we will redeem you, Palestine!"
Kate Hep feels tonight as though the blip of her soul has fallen off God's purple radar.
And mossy-toothed from neglecting her celestial toothbrush she scrapes the grimy dandruff from underneath her fingernails with a stardust toothpick, shaves her eyebrows, shaves her scalp, asks the dead Sheikh Ahmed Yassin to paint her head a milky green, borrows the bucket of paint, slathers her breasts, her elbows, her knees, slides her limbs and torso back into that iridescent robe and crams in nine slender sticks of dynamite.