E.E. Cummings Prize, selected by Chard deNiord
Wendy Drexler is a recipient of a 2022 artist fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her fourth collection, Harvest of What Remains, will be published in January 2026 by Lily Poetry Review and received honorable mention for the Paul Nemser Prize. Her poems have appeared in Barrow Street, J Journal, Nimrod, Pangyrus, Prairie Schooner, Salamander, Solstice, The Mid-American Review, The Sun, and The Threepenny Review, among others. She was the poet in residence at New Mission High School in Hyde Park, MA, from 2018 to 2023 served as programming co-chair for the New England Poetry Club from 2016–2024.
On Seeing the Movie No Other Land
—a Golden Shovel using quotations from the movie
The West Bank settlers believe the land belongs to them, believe what they
are doing is justified, that ancient law divines the right to terrorize and destroy
Palestinian homes makeshift with concrete blocks & corrugated metal, that it’s them or us
while we in our row in the worn-out theatre are shrinking slowly
into the worn velveteen of our shame, as humans, as Jews, in every
scene we watch the tanks advance, and watch the always-tall settlers stride, carrying sticks, week
after week they keep coming—the punctual army engineer, his impervious authority to destroy a
school, we watch the teachers evacuate boys & girls from their classroom home.
No safety even there! & when a settler shoots and paralyzes an unarmed man, we can’t
not watch, we cringe-watch, & when the film ends, I want to pretend, as you
would, the destruction has ended, but I still hear the shouts & the rumble of tanks, still see
that single pigeon left alive in the rubble of a home. I want to know if that
bird is alive, I want kinder gods & I want humane politicians, & after we
leave the theatre I don’t know how to wedge my outrage into action, my words are
thinned across the distance where land and anger checkpoint & break, so bitterly intertwined.