THE CHILDREN HAVE FORGOTTEN TO BE AFRAID

Sarah Terkaoui

when another bomb lands

sends up great concrete splinters.

mushrooms the city.

they may pause,

speculate on where

the hit was, whether

there will still be school.

perhaps plan a new route

to their playgrounds

amongst burned out cars

street craters and

ruined apartment blocks

that turned into cemeteries.

they will not stop, flinch,

cry out. they cannot be

afraid of their lives.

Sarah Terkaoui is of dual Middle East/Irish heritage and lives in leafy SW London. She has been shortlisted for the Cinnamon Press Poetry Pamphlet Award 2022, commended for the Goldsmiths Poetry Festival and the Hippocrates Poetry Prize 2021 and longlisted for the Live Canon international poetry Prize 2021. Her work appears in both anthologies and in Ink Sweat & Tears, Imposter, Green Ink Poetry, The Storms, Dreich and Wee Dreich. Most recently she appeared as part of the Live Canon Lunchtime Readings series and the Poets for the Ukraine poem-a-thon fundraiser. She is currently studying for an MA in Writing Poetry (Newcastle University/ Poetry School London) and working on her first collection.