This city is
red brick and rugged
fine art, portraits and public alleys,
Whole Foods graffiti and museum dispensaries,
sardine cars huddled and cooling—
Your feet say,
Rest, I’ll take it from here.
This city is
walkways and welcome signs
hung low and dented
by passerby trucks,
a bumper’s jostle and a joke—
Maybe I’m thin enough to make it through.
This city is
twenty-seven floors and Gothic arches,
altar bells and baseball bat cracks
from Red Sox wannabes—
No reservations, but we’ll find you a seat.
This city:
catalogs stories
between the crimson tiles of its make-up;
records the setting day’s motion
in the oscillations of a porch swing,
is awed by the way
histories rub shoulders
after dinner in the evening.
Morning’s breath
snakes down my craned neck,
a crisp swirl
of whispers ashen and remnant
cloud and coagulate
alongside my clavicle,
the hush of early-today
sticky warm
and sickly sweet
with dream ramblings
that wriggled between unbrushed teeth—
their stories dig cavities,
soil crowns.
I feel
sunrise gossip
build cumulus clouds
under my chin
threatening, pulsing,
its promise of storm—
a noose lifts me
to a wakening sky.
I watch the day turn
between gradients of grey.
(a blackout poem)
I stayed home
working against progress,
I said nothing.
I expect
shaking,
tightening my veiny hands.
Fight back.
The spine
I probably didn’t even have.
Release.
Years I had
opportunities to learn, desire.
Building muscle alone.
I pressed play.
It doesn’t compete anymore.
Shrink.
I, in the living room.
My front lawn has ghost tracks—
toeprint indents from phantom feet
and limbs, a remembrance—
Ding-dong ditched and vanished
in poltergeist play,
veered diagonal from front door
to cul-de-sac,
off the pathway we tiled
for propper disappearing acts.
A presence left his impression
in landscaped lines.
A street-facing spirit,
a front garden ghoul.
Here, and then gone—
His memory turned our mulch.
Did our perennials catch
under his toenails,
a nursery relic he collects
from one trespassing to the next?
Lives I watch
from this twenty-second story
are yoga mats on adjacent rooftops,
sprawled, sweat-drenched and pollen-dusted
8 AM Thursday flow
to a playlist of Brooklyn traffic—
her body elastic, a figurine from where I peer,
stretching into a workday morning
a bridge,
a salutation.
From this twenty-second story,
limbs rush
to catch trains to downtown
or friends a block down
or rush for the rushing,
this New York thrill,
these high-gear streets.
Bodies and buses
rev to match a city’s pace—
kinetic energy from underground trains
quake the pavement,
spur the wheels of a city bike
into forward motion.
I feel it in my toes, from this twenty-second story.
Watching lives in the way
morning dew glistens on concrete,
and lives in terrace gardens, plastic grass,
lives in bulldozers,
lives in upward dogs and dogs on leashes,
panting in pace
with their master’s jogs,
lives in the buildings at eye-level
clandestine behind fog.
A girl on the twenty-something floor
peers out of her bedroom window,
imagining through the clouds,
thinking of me.
My mother’s name
resides curbside
somewhere between the streets
of 1960s Tel Aviv.
Its childhood coo
a sweet sound,
its short legs swinging
playful above Rematachayal sidewalks,
perched on Aba’s porch chair
pulled closed to the street
to watch the children play
and wave to neighbors
strolling from Shul to Shabbat—
Ednale.
My mother’s name,
created and cultivated
in the Moledet,
its singsong vowels
formed first on my Savta’s mouth,
kissed into my mother’s forehead,
indenting her third eye with a namesake—
watchful,
an outward view of her homestead—
Ednale.
My mother’s name
was and is
in childhood prayers
and a family of four sisters,
in the hallways of a neighborhood grade school
and between windows of a neighbor’s lost love.
Her name is in the Yom Kippur War
and her Ima’s orange peel candies.
Her name is in evenings dancing
and hair rollers shared with her sisters,
and on a bus with Yochanan across the aisle—
he, a silent soldier,
she, a collection of stories
chanted in high pitch memories.
My mother’s name
is preserved in a promise
of her homecoming—
oh joy, oh peace,
oh Ednale—
return to the Motherland,
return to your mother tongue
where your name
is uttered so purely,
this, a pledge
to retrace your steps
and gather the consonants of your name
you left behind.
by Edna Levy Green, translated by Talia Green
My name,
a gift from my birth
by parents who blessed its life—
My name,
that I’ve grown into
and grown with,
my name in my hands.
My name, loved
by those who loved me
and I deserted,
the name
I let slip from my hands.
Edna, oh Ednale,
oh joy, oh peace.
Without regretful pause,
without hesitation,
without a backward glance
it fell, my name—
so long, I moved forward, steadfast.
And now, I swear,
for you—I return.
Return to my name,
return to the Moledat,
a homecoming,
over my shoulder and steps toward
my Motherland,
my name I left behind.
What art can we make
from our wreckage,
Our astringent rubble?
Pebbles have rattled loose
from our ceiling
under battering from
an overhead storm—
they precipitate in shapes,
hail in abstract form,
configure in sharp lines
on our living room floor.
Debris, dislodged
from our rooftop
and settled again
at our feet in off-octagons.
Bewitching asymmetry,
our destruction.
Pebbles pose,
and we pose,
our shadows manipulate
the lighting above our display,
shade our angular spaces,
smoothing the raised lines
of the ceiling tile
accrued by our sockless feet.
Think of the constellations—
Yankee candles and their geometrics.
Their flickers at funny angles,
too removed from our mouths
to be hampered by our giggling.
Our spit doesn’t go that far.
Think of the constellations—
Don’t think of the stars,
think of the sew lines between them.
Sweater threads,
loose and frayed,
but looping each amber spec,
knotting their form to its gauze, to each other.
Buttons across charcoal cotton.
They warm us on November nights.
Think of—
constellations,
candles and buttons,
giggles and borrowed sweaters,
chilly toes and funny angles.
We sit on the in-between lines,
our legs swinging between constellations
unbothered by the winds back on Earth.
Are you desolate or free,
shedding parts of yourself?
Clutching your canopy
until its vibrancy dulled
into sleepy amber,
until its luscious frame
withered to papyrus scraps,
until its grip fatigued,
and, to your canopy,
the ground looked so wistful,
heaps of its counterparts
huddled together in rest.
Who let go first,
you or your leaves?
It must be this loss
that scrapes rings into your base,
a wrinkle for a summer in passing–
each ridge, a memorial
for the self you had
let fragment and fall.
What mournfulness you must feel,
a body to withstand seasons
and bearings that wither
once the air grows cold.