Selected Poems

BLOODLUST

I hesitate now

the red wool hot between

my fingers—

you can only wear what I think is sexy

he said, before I bought the sweater.

The salesgirl thought we were together.

He wanted everyone

to think so.

Maybe it was the red that drove him—

a bull rushing into the ring

demanding a taste of its victim.

But when he gored me open,

I could only bleed water.

And that was never enough to satisfy bloodlust.  

IMPACT

Looking for a place to start, a jumping-off point:
Do I tell the story of the first time
I saw him—the white cement floor, my gold shirt with buttons,
and his eerie, black-eyed smile
sending me flash-flood warnings?
Or do I relay the aftermath
of a mental hostage-taking?
The way the metal wires inside me
were meticulously cut,
and have still not congealed
enough for me to display in dainty, twinkly lights
that “It’s okay” and “I’m alright”
and that I’m not still dreaming the nightmares
of his eyes on me across a room
or his hands kneading my skin like smooth, pliant dough.  
Do I admit I’m still drinking in and shaking like a leaf
to the flashbacks
when I drive by streets or watch television commercials
that remind me
I was ever lost to myself, to the constellations around me?
And maybe such an admission wouldn’t be the worst
place to start—
like jumping off a cliff into the sea
with absolutely no fear of the impact.

CONTROL

A year ago, today, we went to lunch
at the grill house you liked,
a street over from HaMasger.
I gnawed at a chicken breast,
the knife and fork slipping
from my fingers each time
I tried to cut to the bone.
A strange taste stirred in my mouth
unlike anything I remembered
from the times we’d eaten there before.
And I left feeling sick, a cramp
worming its way through my stomach,
despite the warm January day
and the sun glinting in your black eyes
without a hint of their malice,
only mischief.
I was wearing gold, like a statuette,
a goddess ready to be toppled
and tossed from a six-story pedestal.
My necklace was beaded in green,
and you reminded me it could be
a noose, or an anchor.
The choice was supposed to be mine.
But the clanging silverware
had made me lose control
of the feeling in my fingers.
And you had preordained me as
savior or oppressor, Jesus or Judas,
Madonna slinking into whore.
So what kind of choice was that
to leave in my hands,
when—as I’d finally learn—your grip
was infinitely stronger than mine.

THINKING OF NOTHING

I sat alone on the balcony this morning
drinking coffee, thinking of nothing.
You kissed me and were gone,
the night before, its overturned chair
and lukewarm rice, gone too, sopped
into the wet towel you left
hanging from the bathroom door.
Light spilled into our apartment; I was
awake, tracing a thin line of black
under my eyes. Thin, like a stray hair,
I thought. Light, like the breeze
streaming in soundlessly from the window.
I will sit on the balcony, I thought.
I will be alone, but I will sit, and I will wait.

BURSTING

I had it in my hands,

an orange—round and ripe,

and bursting forth

with juice.

It wanted to be stripped of its skin, and sucked, and licked.

Tended to with the warm tongue

of a mother bear on her bleeding cub.

I had it in my hands,

this orange—and I slowly started to peel it.

Hard seeds spilled out,

as I broke it open,

gently, and with my teeth,

and the juice had turned so bitter.

I drank it anyway.

THE DARK BENEATH

To get out of bed this morning, I had to rush

through the motions of wakefulness—

pull a pencil skirt over my legs and up

to meet a sleeveless blouse, retrieve a peach

and several cubes of chocolate

from the recesses of a refrigerator shelf,

then dot my blemishes

with concealer, purposefully forgetting

the black Kohl that generously grants

my eyes some sense of purpose,

armor against the dark beneath.

To think my life is a series of little tasks,

each measured in the moments

until it will be over—

which makes you funny,

that I keep returning to

a dark car in a mall parking lot,

the silence hanging between us like a gun

in a Chekhov play; your coal-black eyes

clouding over—angry for no reason,

and me reaching over, a hand cutting

across waves, thinking it could,

at once, prevent and control the flood.

INHERITANCE

“But what else

can a mother give her daughter but such

beautiful rifts in time?”

    - Eavan Boland, “The Pomegranate”

It was years ago that she clung to a blonde boy

in a Nachlaot slum,

since she ate sunflower seeds

and forgot to notice the bitter taste.

He would strum Bob Dylan on a ukelele, and she didn't

think twice about stretching out

over the sheets

and offering herself as an afternoon sacrifice

about to go up in smoke.

I went to Jerusalem, like her,  

running toward a different unhappiness.  

I have kept a man,

not her rotation of phone numbers,

or neighborhoods as the years passed.

And though I would never want to jump

and break, as she did, like a tree cracking in two,

I know a twig inside me

has already snapped.

HOLIDAYS

for S.W.

Washington Square was under us 
in early October  
             and above, the afternoon 
I had to stare up at both you 
and the trees, the French arch
reaching for everything, I lost 

             the poem, the man 
we stopped for wrote
and gave to us, something
about selfishness and fish
             maybe also little teeth 
but we said goodbye barefoot 
             with only a wave
and I lost all my clothes, all my shame 
             in one moment 

in late December you took me out
to Rockefeller Center 
the tall evergreen and every light 
twinkling under New York’s 
             invisible stars
so immaculately beautiful
I giggled and couldn’t move

you asked me to ice skate 
and I said no, no, to spare us 
from some grave embarrassment 
             that has still not washed off
the two of us like that
standing close together but not 
             touching, forever 
under the cold white frost
                 
             you wanted something I didn’t 
know how to want 
                   and now I do.

A FEMALE SAMSON

​

standing close to the man 
who puts his claim on me 

​

I tell myself to, at least, 
whisper no

​

but a little girl is spilling out 
between my legs

​

begging to be corrected 
into some version of myself 
that knows no contradictions

​

that approaches 
wholeness 

​

that little girl is bound
into submission

​

as the rest of me struggles
against the bonds 

​

a female Samson, 
hair still long,
forcing the body asunder

REUNION

Jerusalem's mountain air whips around me

and I feel colder than I have in months.

We come upon cobblestone streets.  

Pine trees with blackened leaves

glow under the bright lights of empty shops.

The alleys form a maze

    that you have solved but I will never learn.

In the morning, I stare down the slope

at the hills and their patches of green,

between jutting rocks.

I leave more than you behind.