My Golden Pothos strives so hard, to
Grace the sun-dappled Persian rug
With elegant tendrils, she senses her world,
Exploring beyond her small side-table
It's almost as if she'd no idea, that
Once her soft leaves reach the floor
I'll cut them off
Replant them anew
Maybe in another room
Beneath another warm, bright window
Where the process will begin again
This is how it has always been
Having been born, was the primary sin.
I think I'm dying, and
Not in the way that we all are
But maybe
Exactly in the same way that we
All Are.
I think I'm dying, and
I can't explain, but it's a
Sense of the end of things, and it's quiet,
But nudge-y
I think I'm dying
And, the
Air outside is dense and
Hot, and almost orange like gaseous lava,
And from my window today, I can
Barely even make out the Krayot across the Bay
I think I'm dying
But right now, ice is
Noisily cracking in a sweating glass beside me, and my
Cold coffee is just, *chef's kiss*
And as of yesterday, my
Nails are all painted "Cherry-Pop Red", (both hands and feet!)
I think I'm dying
But this morning I got a
Text, that some package from Temu is
Awaiting my pick-up at Hop Li, and
On my livingroom wall,
The sun, through my partially shuddered window has drawn a
Perfect rendering of the tree outside,
Where the fruit bats hang, and besides,
Just yesterday, in Shufersal,
I finally bought a new bag of a
Shabbat candles– a hundred of them
They only last 4 hours, but
Who'm I trying to kid?
These days I've unfailingly
Eaten, and am in bed, long before
They'll burn themselves out.
I think
I'm dying, but maybe
I still have some surprises left to look forward to, and
Even if this annoying sense is right, and
I am dying,
My plants still all need watering
This summer's heat has been
Hard on them, too.
All these things that were
Left behind
My mother-in-law's wedding ring,
(a strange, egg-shaped silver thing)
My Dad's watches, and
The fat black fountain pen that always leaked
The Beatles records
For whom at least one,
They'd stood on line
On a Winter, Pittsburgh sidewalk
Waiting to buy
(my Mom's fat belly
Protruding from her coat
already with me
And this poem inside)
Books whose spines had been
Silent friends
Eventhough their stories, re-
mained obscured
Oil paintings, and sketches
And a brick-red bust
From my Mom's
and/or Dad's university friends
These things, too carelessly, swept aside
Breadcrumbs that I've
Left behind, can
Never again
Lead me back
And there is no "back"
And at any rate
were all too sweet
for the birds to resist
Or the transatlantic winds
To allow to persist.
The grey Bay stalks the
Ir HaTachtit
Clandestine, in threadbare
Slippers, she creeps
The vigilant pigeons–
Our sentinals, all sleep
As the waters invade
And the city sinks.
The pigeons that pepper the
Flat, white roof
Outside my open kitchen window,
Are lying down in the
Afternoon sun. Perplexed,
And maybe, a little concerned,
Seek out the oracle,
To see what she knows:
"Hey Google," I say, "what does it mean
When an entire flock of pigeons
Lie down in the afternoon sun?"
But disappointingly,
There's no great mystery,
Sometimes pigeons just lie down
And there is no storm
Coming in from the West,
Nor will the Ayatollah, or the Houtis
Disturb our Shabbat.
At least not as far as these birds are concerned
The pigeons are simply lying down;
But here's the thing: when
You live in a world, where
Fate turns quickly, through both
Nature, and man, something as simple
As pigeons loafing on rooftops
Might seem like a sign
If you believe in that sort of thing.
I'd loved you even
Before we had met,
Outside my dreams, and so,
I go seeking,
Furiously scratching in
All your corners
Turning over old
Piles of dust, and
Sifting through them,
For flecks of the stuff
I'd known so well, as
What made up
The bricks of the cities
My mother had built,
Even before I
Was part of her dreams.
Aba,
Those sepia days you spent
Running, scraped knees
A "vilde chaya" on the streets
Of Squirrel Hill, I keep,
In an old, brown, velvet pouch
Tucked safe Into the space behind my eyes.
It's been there all these years, while so much
Else has been left behind: a kind
Of portable familiarity that
You once gave me.
But Aba,
I want you to know, that
I have finally found my own
A million miles and a
Thousand years from that
Butterscotch amber hued world that you’d
Once laid across my shoulders,
(I danced around in it, showing it off
Like a showgirl, given a
New fox stole.)
I think if you were here, you would
Say I'm weird,
But I swear, there are moments,
I can recall your childhood
More clearly than my own, and
I can't help but wonder: what, if anything
Does it say, that
So much of who I am
Was built of these bricks that
You had laid?
There's a pull to this hole
A gravitational pull,
As strong as any
Massive collapsed star.
It works like this: I want to write
I NEED to write, but
To get to the place where I
Need to be, demands of me
A certain mind
A certain, funny kind of mood,
That can digest all the best of my world
Stripping off parts,
("Spaghettified", they call it,) until
I'm stretched so thin you
Might not even recognise me.
But ironically enough, it's
Only then, when I'm stretched out thin
A streak of dust, that the
Flecks of gold
Laid bare, their conceit
Can reflect the light
And how brilliantly they shine.
I loved New York.
I loved it in the kind of way that one loves a best friend who's always been there, and who conceivably always will be. I loved the familiarity of everything, how this city that to those who don't live there must feel a bit like a beautiful but unpredictable beast, but to me, each block driving up Third Avenue felt as familiar as my own living room.
I loved New York, but I needed to unstick myself from the trajectory I was on.
I felt as if I was on that carnival ride, I think it's called the "Log Flume", where, you sit in a hollowed-out log, and instead of wheels on a track, you float through a trough that's filled with water, and it splashes you as you go.
My life up until I left, had begun to feel every bit like this ride, except that at the end, rather than the de-boarding platform where other, hot, impatient carnival goers were lined up waiting to ride, there was a sawmill, and I was moving closer and closer to that spinning blade everyday.
I love New York, and in my mind, I can see so many intimate details from my life, from each trodden-on gum stain and sidewalk crack through which I'd pass on my way to the Whole Foods on the corner at E 88th & 3rd, (that had taken over the commercial space that had been vacated by:
1. a small health food store,
2. a dialysis clinic, and
3. an after school tutoring business,)
or the Café d'Alsace on Second that had moved from the beautiful beaux artes building where I'd sit and watch the foot traffic while I drank my bowls of café au lait, (that has tragically, since been demolished,) to the spot, two storefronts up, where Elaine's used to be. I know which bushes in the church yard on E 88th between Second & First bear the most gorgeous flowers, and by instinct, on what day after Winter (or in a few cases, in the midst thereof,) that they'd come to life.
I know intimately, the aisles of the Fairway to which I'd go, all the way downtown, just for their Israeli food and gluten-free sections. I know the rows and corners of its produce section and exactly the spot to find fresh, fragrant, feathery bunches of dill, all slightly damp, and wrapped at their stems in a taupe rubber band.
I love New York, but when I see the same things every day, year after year year after year, I begin to think the same kinds of thoughts every day, year after year, and I look for ways to burst free of that cycle; sometimes, the only one that felt accessible to me was death.
I love New York, but I wasn't ready to die, so I left, to see new things, trip on different sidewalk cracks, learn new supermarkets and love different flowers, and to think different thoughts. To write different poems and stories and confessional essays.
Once, many, many years ago, while standing on 14th St, at Union Square South, I wrote a poem about the Zen maxim that says, "a man cannot step into the same river twice, for rivers flow, and so it's never truly the same river, and men change, think new thoughts, have new impressions; cells die and new cells are born, so even from moment to moment, a man is not the same man."
The poem was far shorter, and more importantly, distilled than this description of it, or the explanation I just gave, but then, it was a poem, and I mention it because, I love New York, and I miss her in ways that I'll never get over, regardless of what I tell you as I shrug my shoulders, cock my head and raise my eyebrows in that stoic gesture that says, "whadayagonnado?"
I love New York, but I'd begun to write the same poems over and over again, and to try to wet my feet in the same water from which they'd originally sprung.
I love New York, but I had gotten from her, all that I knew how.
I love New York, but it was time to leave.
It was time to leave, and so, I left, but also, I'm no longer young, and so, I returned to a river I'd also greatly loved, and as it turns out, the maxim holds true: it's not the same river, and I am most certainly not the same woman.
For Dahliah Ravikovitch
Dahliush
I call you this even
Though when we met
You were already gone, so
Now, we nestle
Beween the pages of a book
That was stolen from a
Public library in Texas,
That I'd bought for twenty sheqels
On Agripas Street.
"How ever did you end up in
Texas" I ask, pillow talk.
But you wrinkle your nose
At me, and say nothing
And I say, "You know,
I too once owned a dress of fire,
My parents made me wear it,
Year after year, until the
White crinoline had
Melted to my legs."
You look at me,
Amused, but sad, and say
"What do you mean, 'you too',
Don't you recall, that
In the end, it was
Not my dress at all,
It was only me that burned,"
And I roll away
And you touch my back.
The scars on my back.
"I want to find a
New pair of comfy sandals
That don't look like 'old lady' shoes."
"I want to get into hiking."
"I want to finally organise my living room."
"I want to...
I want...
...
I want a new distraction from the futile, and terminal nature of existence.
I want to feel pleasure
And joy in
Laughing at this absurdity.
Remember:
Godot never shows.
It just is what it is.
I dreamt that the stone had
taken root in my pocket,
roots like pointed fingers,
penetrating my hip
and following the path
of least resistance,
new fruit burst forth from my
flowering mouth.
The apricot I ate this morning in the mamad,
which I'd taken, half awake, from the grey plastic bowl that
Dvora had set before us
a small, sweet, refreshment
between booms,
is also a poem. After finishing it
in only three bites, I
tucked its small stone
into the pocket of my housedress.
Here is a piece of
Sage advice: when you
Live in a warzone
There's no such thing
As a leisurely shit.
(It's ok to laugh!
Real life is always ignominious and absurd!)
Instead, you wait
Until it's ready to come out
(Or you don't, depending
Upon the time of day,
And when, you've learned that the
Missiles usually come)
You thank god that some genius
Invented bidets
And you do not sit, and write
Poems on your phone,
Or let your mind wander as you
Doom-scroll Instagram, because
Exhausted as you may be, from
Four sleepless nights in a row
At any second your
Phone might wake up,
With another red alert
And while death from a
Ten-tonne ballistic might feel far
Too overwhelming, and ridiculous to be real
Dying while on the toilet, is
A concept of which,
Ironically, you can all too easily conceive.
White nights
Of red alerts
Necessitate strong black coffee
And cheap cigarettes
(Even if it's years, since the
Last time you smoked.)
This is no time for slow
Sidewalk cappuccinos
Or thinking of your health, or the
State of your manicure,
Instead, catch naps, or sleep in 'til two
Eat cheese or a pint of Ben & Jerry's for dinner
And take pleasure where you can
Have sex, even if
Only with yourself
And only so long as
You can throw on a robe
And get down to the shelter
In a minute or less.
After yet another White Night
Of Red Alerts,
This
Blinding yellow morning
At least this time
In Dvora's mamad,
Avi, a gentle soul
Who's let his daughter (21) paint
Blue irises on his arm,
has brought Whiskey
And two golden painted tea glasses
Only two
I've a feeling he didn't
Know that I-
Dvora's neighbour,
Would be here.
To you, who are so upright,
Concerned with justice and equality;
I would like to ask:
What is it like
To live your days in sun and peace without shadows
To dip your toes in my world at will
Because you were bored
Or maybe because you needed to prove how worldly you were,
Or worse
You needed a dopamine hit
And my pain,
And their pain
Is such a delicious vein, that you
Could signal your virtue to the ends of the earth?
What is it like
Never to have to think of things like
Wherever you are,
Where the closest bomb shelter can be found, and
How many seconds you'll have to get there
And to know, by some internal mechanism exactly what 15 seconds feels like
Or worse, how you'll shield your young children's bodies with your own, as you
Throw yourselves down on the ground, under a dangerous sky when you
Find yourselves caught between your children's gan, and home when the azaka sounds? And
What is it like
To never have to think about
Mothers, burying their sons, or daughters
Or children burying their fathers, or mothers
(Or both)
Except, of course, in the most hypothetical terms as you tighten your lips
Click your tongue and think "How awful"?
Or to look in the mirror, and decide "it's time for a trim", so you
Call up your hairdresser
(The one that you've gone to since your early twenties,)
To make an appointment only to learn
She was killed
Last week
When she was caught outside,
Between her children's school, and home when there was a red alert.
And as it turns out,
Did save them from the worst,
But couldn't protect her soft body, or her head from falling shrapnel?
And as you shout at us in the
Streets of Europe or America, calling us
"Baby killers", screaming about "genocide"
We know: you're transparent as glass.
All your concerns, for
Justice, and equality, are symbols for a status that you could never possess.
When, in the path of a glacier, you built your town
You must have thought
You'd had 10,000 years
But 10,000 years comes before you know it
And anyways, things happen
To speed the course of events
(You couldn't have forseen, for instance,
Climate change, at the time)
I hope you understand
This isn't an admonishment
I have built my life
In much the same way.
You asked me
To wait for you
In my smooth, modal dress
The one, you'd always said, just shyly seemed to note the valleys of my body–
The dips above my hips
The curve of my lower back
You asked
That I wait for you
In our golden chair
Which made its way to me
All the way across an ocean
And a sea
All the while, the
Soft scarlet throw sent to us by my mother, still miraculously
Crumpled upon its seat
You want to know
If I'll wait for you, now,
As the evening sun falls- surrendered to the blackening hills of the Galil
And I will
I will wait,
Red lines, now drawn
Down the delicate pale of each arm.
So, I'm standing in the tortilla section at Shufersal, looking a little lost when a woman approaches, and asks, "&/'@&] tortillas?"
I take out one earbud, (ironically at the moment Joe Strummer is singing "I'm lost in the supermarket, I can no longer shop happily",) look at her and respond,
אאאם, סליחה, אני מחפשת טורטיות ללא גלוטן
She looks at me as if I've just asked her where I might find special vibrators for ducks, so I shake my head and explain,
"אאם, לא שמעתי מה אמרת, הקשבתי למוזיקה".
She nods, still looking at me as if I'm not someone she'd necessarily trust around innocent waterfowl, and repeats,
"?יש לך ויזה שלנו"
I respond,
".לא, ולא רוצה, תודה"
and quickly stick Joe back in my ear.
Finally done with my shopping, I make my way to the self-checkout. By now, my tracklist has switched to "Sandanista!" and Mick Jones is singing "Somebody got murdered", a little too cheerfully, I think.
I finish bagging my groceries, and am regretting having bought the 4-pack of 1.5 litre bottles of Schweppes on a day when I didn't bring my עגלה, when the woman who oversees the self check-out bay comes over to me, holding a pen. I figure she wants to check my receipt, so I hand it to her, but she doesn't take it.
I take out an earbud, looking at her quizzically.
"?יש לך ויזה שלנו"
she asks.
".לא, ואני לא רוצה"
I respond, demonstrably annoyed, struggling with my heavy shopping bags.
She steps in front of me, and in Russian accented Hebrew says,
"?למה את לא רוצה"
"!סתם, ככה, אוקיי? אני לא רוצה"
I respond, and replace my earbud, before struggling towards the escalator like an aardvark, trying to do the job of two packmules who are out sick with mono.
Later that evening, I'm sound asleep, when I suddenly wake in a cold sweat. It's pitch dark in my room, and I reach out a probing hand, looking for my phone.
Squinting, I see that it's 03:43. I sigh in exasperration, and allow the hand holding my phone to drop back onto the bed, but in the midst of its arc, there in its blue light, I see something that instantly terrifies me; peering at me, out of the dark, is a face.
Panicked, I turn on my lamp, and as soon as I do, I see that there is not just one, but at least 16 older Russian women standing around my bed. They're all wearing Shufersal uniforms, and holding clipboards, and in a perfectly timed, heavily Russian-accented chorus, they speak as one:
"?יש לך ויזה שלנו"
That's when I blacked out.
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