I am a rose of Sharon, As a lily among brambles, As an apple tree among the trees of the wood, The voice of my beloved! My beloved speaks and says to me: My beloved is mine and I am his, The Song of Songs, also known as the “Song of Solomon” or “Canticles,” is one of the megillot (scrolls) found in the last section of the Tanakh, known as the Ketuvim (or “Writings”), a book of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. The Song of Songs is unique within the Hebrew Bible: it shows no interest in Law or Covenant or the God of Israel; instead, it seems to celebrate sexual love. It gives “the voices of two lovers, praising each other, yearning for each other, proffering invitations to enjoy.” The two are in harmony, each desiring the other and rejoicing in sexual intimacy. (Annotated biography of King Solomon courtesy of Wikipedia.org, with edits.) Editor’s Note: In honor of Valentine’s Day, the Saturday Poetry Series offers you a good old fashioned love poem, emphasis on the old. An anomaly among the fire and brimstone, monotheistic propaganda, and general prescription of the Bible, the illicit sexual nature and unbridled romance of The Song of Songs has baffled scholars for centuries. Believed to have been written some time between the tenth and second centuries BCE, there is no authoritative agreement regarding the poem’s authorship, inception, or setting. The subject matter of the poem itself has long been heatedly debated, with some scholars embracing the titillating nature of this epic poem, while others insist it is a metaphor for man’s love of God. While its milder language is often quoted in the context of weddings, showcasing a true love with ancient roots, when one sits down and reads this masterpiece from beginning to end—with eyes wide open—they encounter a hot and steamy poem that gives Fifty Shades of Grey a real run for its money. Want to read more about Biblical poetry?
Depiction of Solomon and Pharaoh’s daughter reciting the Song of Solomon.
This image is in the public domain.
From THE SONG OF SONGS
From the Hebrew Bible
a lily of the valleys.
so is my love among maidens.
so is my beloved among young men.
With great delight I sat in his shadow,
and his fruit was sweet to my taste.
He brought me to the banqueting house,
and his banner over me was love.
Sustain me with raisins,
refresh me with apples;
for I am sick with love.
O that his left hand were under my head,
and that his right hand embraced me!
I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
by the gazelles or the hinds of the field,
that you stir not up nor awaken love until it please.
Behold, he comes,
leaping upon the mountains,
bounding over the hills.
My beloved is like a gazelle,
or a young stag.
Behold, there he stands
behind our wall,
gazing in at the windows,
looking through the lattice.
“Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away;
for lo, the winter is past,
the rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth,
the time of singing has come,
and the voice of the turtledove
is heard in our land.
The fig tree puts forth its figs,
and the vines are in blossom;
they give forth fragrance.
Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away.
O my dove, in the clefts of the rock,
in the covert of the cliff,
let me see your face,
let me hear your voice,
for your voice is sweet,
and your face is comely.
Catch us the foxes,
the little foxes,
that spoil the vineyards,
for our vineyards are in blossom.”
he pastures his flock among the lilies.
Until the day breathes
and the shadows flee,
turn, my beloved, be like a gazelle,
or a young stag upon rugged mountains.
(Today’s poem is in the public domain, belongs to the masses, and appears here today accordingly.)
Wikipedia
Tag: Poetry International
SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: GILI HAIMOVICH
By Gili Haimovich:
*
My Hebrew is going to get hurt.
So how will she continue to adorn me?
Through my attachment to her
she multiplies,
as if allowing me more time to lament.
*
הָעִבְרִית שֶׁלִּי תֵּכֶף תִּפָּצַע
?אָז אֵיךְ תַּמְשִׁיךְ לְיַפּוֹת אוֹתִי
דֶּרֶךְ הַהִקָּשְׁרוּת שֶׁלִּי אֵלֶיהָ
הִיא הוֹלֶכֶת וּמִתְרַבָּה
.כְּמוֹ לְהַסְפִּיק שֶׁאַסְפּיד יוֹתֵר
Translated from Hebrew by Dara Barnat. Poem originally appeared via The Bakery and appears here today with permission from the poet.
The Dragonfly
I’m ashamed to say it but
The wings of the dragonfly I was
Were made of glass.
Her delicate but roachy body buzzed
In a pleasant yet mechanical way.
I’m ashamed to look at her because I believe it’s still possible
to see her there.
Between you and me,
what blew her cover were the wings attached to her small body
not the bolt,
but the usual flesh and bones and muscles
flapping with the energy of a female.
Poem originally appeared in Recours au Poeme and ARC and appears here today with permission from the poet.
Gili Haimovich is an internationally published poet and translator. In North America she had published the chapbook Living on a Blank Page (Blue Angel Press 2009) and in Hebrew she has four volumes of poetry. Her work appears or are forthcoming in numerous journals and anthologies such as: The International Poetry Review, LRC – The Literary Review of Canada, TOK1: Writing the New Toronto, Asymptote, Ezra Magazine, Lilith, Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal, Cahoots Magazine, Stellar Showcase Journal, Women in Judaism, Recours au Poème (English and Hebrew with French translations) and The Bakery as well as Israeli ones. Gili also works as a Writing Focused Expressive Arts therapist, educator and workshops facilitator.
Editor’s Note: Today’s poems are the closing of a circle. There is no longer beginning or end, only the far reaches, the impact, the power of poetry. What began with my featuring Dara Barnat’s poem “Walt Whitman” became a magic carpet ride within the Holy Land and its many languages. During my sabbatical in Israel I featured so many amazing poets and translators on this series, and now that I have returned to more familiar pastures I am paying homage to all of them with today’s entry. This will not be the last time I feature Hebrew writers in translation or English writers living in Israel, but it is a bookend on a time and a place that forever changed me and for which I am forever grateful. If I am afraid that “my Hebrew is going to get hurt,” I trust that the amazing poets I have shared here with you throughout my journey will work like invisible threads binding me to a language and a country, always.
Want to read more by and about Gili Haimovich?
PoetryOn
Recours au Poem
Asymptote
The Bakery
SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: JOAN PRUSKY GLASS
THE BATHING SCENE FROM MARGUERITE DURAS’S THE LOVER
By Joan Prusky Glass
“Very early in my life it was too late.”
– M. Duras, The Lover
I read The Lover when I was fifteen.
The girl’s red doll lips became my own.
The power she had over
the Chinese man mine too.
His weakness became fuel
for a journey I was preparing for.
I needed him and despised him
before I knew why.
There is a scene in which
the man, on his knees,
bathes the girl’s slender body,
barely pubescent.
She looks down at him coolly,
braids hanging over her shoulders.
Immodest on purpose.
The lover draws a washcloth
across her hips tenderly,
with grief in his eyes.
Perhaps he is trying to wash
away the power he gave her.
She notices him loving her
the way you might notice
a penny tossed into the well
when your pockets
are filled to the brim.
(Today’s poem originally appeared in TRIVIA: Voices of Feminism and appears here today with permission from the poet.)
Joan Prusky Glass lives with her husband and three children in Derby, Connecticut. She is an educator and child advocate by profession. Her poetry has been published or is upcoming in Decades Review, TRIVIA: Voices of Feminism, Bone Parade, Milk Sugar, Harpweaver, Pyrokinection, Literary Mama, University of Albany’s Offcourse, The Rampallian, Visceral Uterus, Up the River, Haggard & Halloo, vis a tergo and Smith College Alumnae Quarterly among others.
Editor’s Note: What draws us into today’s piece, and what makes us resist against it? Where does the reader’s experience end and the poet’s begin? Where does the poet dissolve into the girl; where does the girl begin and her author end? Is today’s feature about power? Scandal? Sex? Love?
Today Joan Prusky Glass blurs the lines between perception and art, between experience and literature, between revulsion and beauty. The poet paints a watercolor of words, one vivid pigment bleeding into the next, so that we are both moved and unsteady. We are left not knowing where we stand; unsure of the medium, of the players, of ourselves.
Want to read more by and about Joan Prusky Glass?
“Inanimate Objects,” Bone Parade
Three poems, Offcourse
“Boredom Never Killed Anyone,” Visceral Uterus
“On the Death of a Neighbor,” Haggard and Halloo
“The Poet as a Young Girl,” Decades Review
SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: SABINE HUYNH
Photo by Anne Collongues.
FAREWELL CHILDHOOD
By Sabine Huynh
It’s hard not to think
of a place where dogs met
their fate on railway tracks
or in unkempt backyards
where a father with chapped lips planted
tulips around a dying cherry tree
where a mother’s screams scared
dust and kids into dark corners
where children watched T.V.
in the garage – why in the garage? –
where they played with a wheelbarrow
inside, and paper cut-outs
outside, yet they lived in town
it’s hard to ignore
a fact like that
I can only think of it here
facing the sunny Golan heights
with hummingbirds punctuating
my glum memories with gaiety
and cows’ mooing filling up
the deep valley of the past
a flying ant above my head
a white falcon perched on my thumb
if I thought of it there
where it all happened
I’d turn into that
silent child again
and never come back
but I’m here now
I have opened the windows
to let the landscape in
and the childhood out.
(Today’s poem originally appeared in Cyclamens and Swords and appears here today with permission from the poet.)
Sabine Huynh is a Vietnamese-born poet, novelist and translator. Raised in France, she has lived in England, The United States, Canada, and Israel. She writes in both French and English. Her poetry and her poetic translations have appeared in various literary journals and anthologies. She is the author of a poetry anthology, a novel, a collection of short stories, five poetry collections (four in French: two were published, two await pending publication; and one in English, not published yet), and she has translated four poetry collections (from Israel, Canada, and England).
Editor’s Note: In today’s post Sabine Huynh manipulates everyday language to transport us to a vivid past. There is a darkness beneath the light of the poem, and questions remain unanswered—buried—as the poet wants them to. But readers and the poet alike are given permission to let go of haunted memories, to make the life we want for ourselves when Huynh opens the windows for us all, “to let the landscape in / and the childhood out.”
Want to read more by and about Sabine Huynh?
Sabine Huynh’s Official Website
The Ilanot Review
Reiter’s Block
Additional poems in Cyclamens and Swords
Sabine Huynh’s English-to-French translations of an SPS favorite, Dara Barnat
SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: LINDA STERN ZISQUIT
POSIT
By Linda Stern Zisquit
“Ten measures of beauty came down into the world;
Nine were taken by Jerusalem, one by the rest of the world.”
Tractate Kiddushin
“Ten parts of suffering came down into the world; nine
were taken by Jerusalem, one by the rest of the world.”
Avot d’Rabbi Natan
Had Rachel not looked up
Jacob would not have seen her.
There would have been no water,
no winding dream,
no tribe or unrelenting
portion of sadness
dispersed on his land, his Jerusalem,
and I would not have promised
to gather then home. But Rachel
saw him and he loved her.
She was barren and she suffered
and she followed him.
So I have this heaviness
to bear. Her life before him
had also the dailiness of lives,
an hour at which she would rise and go
to the well. Then out of the blue
her future came crashing against her lids
when she looked up, those hours changed,
and I was moved to his, another well.
(Today’s poem originally appeared in the collection Ritual Bath (Broken Moon Press, 1993), was recently published in The Ilanot Review, and appears here today with permission from the poet.)
Linda Stern Zisquit has published four full-length collections of poetry, most recently Havoc: New & Selected Poems (Sheep Meadow Press, 2013). Return from Elsewhere, her fifth volume of poetry, will be published in Spring 2014. Her other books are The Face in the Window (2004), Unopened Letters (1996), and Ritual Bath (1993). Ghazal-Mazal, a chapbook, appeared in 2011. Her translations from Hebrew poetry include These Mountains: Selected Poems of Rivka Miriam (2010), a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award, Let the Words: Selected Poems of Yona Wallach (2006), Wild Light: Selected Poems of Yona Wallach (1997), for which she received an NEA Translation Grant and was shortlisted for the PEN Translation Award, and Desert Poems of Yehuda Amichai (1991). Her work has appeared in journals including The Denver Quarterly, Harvard Review, Paris Review, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, Salmagundi and the Virginia Quarterly Review. Born in Buffalo, NY, Zisquit has lived in Jerusalem with her husband and five children since 1978; she is Associate Professor and Poetry Coordinator for the MA in Creative Writing Program at Bar Ilan University, and runs ARTSPACE, an art gallery in Jerusalem representing contemporary artists.
The Ilanot Review, where today’s poem recently appeared, is a biannual journal of creative writing which publishes a stellar selection of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and literary interviews. The journal publishes two themed issues a year, inviting submissions from English-language poets and writers from anywhere in the world. The Ilanot Review is currently seeking submissions for its winter 2014 edition, through November 30th. The theme of the winter 2014 issue is sacred words.
Editor’s Note: Today’s selection contemplates the question so many of us are wont to ask: “What if?” In today’s piece the poet straddles two worlds; her own life and the biblical tales that shape so much of our modern lives. Within the poet’s words her own life is inextricably linked with the biblical love story of Rachel and Jacob. “Had Rachel not looked up / Jacob would not have seen her,” the poet posits, “But Rachel / saw him and he loved her,” and “So I have this heaviness / to bear.” Had the stories of our people unfolded differently, the poet seems to say, so, too, would our own lives now be different. Time, place, religion, literature, and the poet’s own path are conflated as the poem considers the universal themes of belonging, suffering, love, home, and self.
Want to read more by and about Linda Stern Zisquit?
Buy Havoc from Sheep Meadow Press
Sheep Meadow Press Author Page
Buy Unopened Letters from Amazon
ARTSPACE Gallery
SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: NADAV LINIAL
Left to right: Translator Joanna Chen and poet Nadav Linial. Photo courtesy of Joanna Chen.
PRECISION
By Nadav Linial
Translated by Joanna Chen
At the edge of the garden dew hovers on the iron fence
leaving traces of rust like remembrance
And in the house someone strips artichoke spikes
down to the sweet white heart like layers of forgetfulness.
In the orchard the cells of honeycomb spill over
the hollow body of the tree like tears
And at the edge of the field rain pierces the rock
like yearning.
How can an image capture a name
or speech describe the voice that
broke out when the grain of the soul was
separated from the chaff of the flesh?
I loved you like I loved you.
(Today’s poem originally appeared in the collection Tikrat Haadama [Earth Ceiling] (Keshev Publishing House, 2010) and in Haaretz, and appears here today with permission from the translator.)
Nadav Linial was born in Jerusalem in 1983 and lives in Tel Aviv, teaching in the literature department at Tel Aviv University. His first book, “Tikrat Haadama” (Earth Ceiling), in which this poem appears, was published in 2010 by Keshev Publishing House and was awarded two major prizes for young poets.
Joanna Chen is a British-born poet, journalist and translator. She has written extensively for Newsweek, The Daily Beast, Marie Claire and the BBC World Service. Her poetry and poetic translations were most recently published with Poet Lore, The Bakery, and The Moon Magazine, among others. The translator of today’s poem, Joanna Chen was last week’s featured poet here on the SPS.
Editor’s Note: How can we write about love? Have words ever failed so completely as they do in this? Can a simile adequately describe love? Can a picture painted with words even begin to portray that which is inscribed upon the heart? These are the questions percolating beneath the surface of today’s poem.
For me, as a reader, today’s piece elicits a new kind of love. A love of words themselves, whether or not those words are able to capture that which they seek to describe. How heartbreaking the lyric, how lovely the images. How breathtaking to think of love as physical things, that remembrance can be left like rust, stripped away like forgetfulness. What connection I feel to the powers that be when I imagine the grain of the soul separated from the chaff of the flesh.
In the end, the poet abandons metaphor, admits there are no words that will suffice for love. “I loved you like I loved you.” This, he posits, is the best that words can do. A sparse phrase that tells us nothing and everything at once. I know what it is to have “loved you like I loved you.” Don’t we all?
Want to see more by and about Nadav Linial?
Video: Israeli Center for Libraries (in Hebrew)
SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: JOANNA CHEN
I WILL ALWAYS GO BACK
By Joanna Chen
I will always go back to my brother’s voice, not yet fully broken, counting to ten,
the leaves crackling underfoot, the snag of an oak branch on my old red coat
as I search for a place to hide from him. The smell of damp bracken
from late summer showers, a shudder in the warm air, a whirring of bees,
hundreds of them, whose hive my clumsiness has violated, hunting me down,
swarming full throttle from the depths of the glade, catching up with my awkward
sprint, poison throbbing in their little bodies. They capture me swiftly, clinging
ecstatically to my face, invading my nostrils, attacking my ear lobes, covering the
cuffs of my coat with their rage. When I reach the driveway of our house, I stop
batting my childish hands, stop resisting. I just stand there and let them do it
to me. My brother, hearing my animal screams piercing through the glade,
finds me. He fights them off with his beautiful bare hands.
(Today’s poem originally appeared in Poet Lore Volume 107, Number 3/4 and appears here today with permission from the poet.)
Joanna Chen is a British-born poet, journalist and translator. She has written extensively for Newsweek, The Daily Beast, Marie Claire and the BBC World Service. Her poetry and poetic translations were most recently published with Poet Lore, The Bakery, and The Moon Magazine, among others.
Editor’s Note: Today’s poem pairs pace with alliteration, image with language, and scene with nostalgia to whisk us away to another place and time. Every sense is enlisted so that we are on high alert, in the throes of the events at hand. We are one with the girl, at the mercy of the bees; we, too, know the salvation of a brother and his beautiful bare hands.
Want to read more by and about Joanna Chen?
Joanna Chen’s Official Website
The Ilanot Review
Haaretz
The Bakery
SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: ORIT GIDALI
KOHELET
By Orit Gidali, Translated by Marcela Sulak
I, Kohelet, was king of Jerusalem,
I really was.
Treading over a thousand flowers on my way to the white bed
where my wives waited to remove the crown from my head–
made of marzipan in the biting of sweet tongues–
my silk rubbing against their silk, my flesh would choose among
them, and my flesh was already sweet in their flesh.
Kohelet, I held a thousand women
and I didn’t have a single one
I could recognize by smell
or by her skin or her feet,
her steps as she walked away from me: David’s lament.
Her steps toward me: his song.
I am Kohelet, Solomon,
my linen is the mystery of shrouds
and my bitten crown is above me.
קוהלת
אני קוהלת מלך הייתי בירושלים
באמת הייתי
דורך על אלף פרחים בדרכי למיטה הלבנה
שם חיכו נשותי, שהסירו את כתר ראשי
העשוי מרציפן בנגיסת לשונות מתוקות, משיי
מתחכך במשיין, והייתי בוחר מתוכן לבשרי,
ובשרי כבר מתוק בבשרן.
קוהלת החזקתי אלף נשים
ולא היתה לי אישה יחידה
לזהות את ריחה
ועורה ורגליה
צעדיה ממני: קינת דוד
צעדיה אלי: שירתו
אני קוהלת שלמה
סתרי תכריכים של סדיני
וכתרי הנגוס מעלי.
(Today’s poem originally appeared in The Bakery, was published in the collection Esrim Ne’arot LeKane [Twenty Girls to Envy Me] (Sifriat Poalim, Tel Aviv, 2003), and appears here today with permission from the translator.)
Orit Gidali is an Israeli poet. Her first poetry collection, Esrim Ne’arot LeKane [Twenty Girls to Envy Me], was published by Sifriat Poalim in 2003. Gidali is also the author of Smikhut [Construct State] (2009), and the children’s book Noona Koret Mahshavot [Noona the Mindreader] (2007). She is married to poet Ben-Ari Alex, and is a mother, writing workshop facilitator, and lecturer in the Department of Communication at Tel Aviv University.
Marcela Sulak is the author of two collections of poetry and has translated three collections of poetry from the Czech Republic and Congo-Zaire. Her essays appear in The Iowa Review, Rattle, and The Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. She directs the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University, where she is senior lecturer in American Literature.
Editor’s Note: Kohelet is the original Hebrew name for Ecclesiastes, one of the Writings that comprises a portion of the Hebrew Bible. The book is an autobiographical account of Kohelet’s search for the meaning of life and the best way to live. Kohelet introduces himself as “son of David, king in Jerusalem,” and is therefore sometimes believed to be Solomon. This book, however, was written anonymously and is believed to have ben penned late in the 3rd century B.C.E., while Solomon’s reign was circa 970 to 931 B.C.E.
In today’s piece the poet associates Kohelet with King Solomon and explores the notion that “heavy is the head that wears the crown.” To get to his marriage bed the king must trample a thousand flowers. He has “held a thousand women” (Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines and may have had an affair with the Queen of Sheba), but “didn’t have a single one / [he] could recognize by smell / or by her skin or her feet.” His wives remove his crown from his head—perhaps an allusion to his wives’ polytheism which influenced Solomon and displeased God—and at that his crown is “made of marzipan” and therefore vulnerable to “the biting of sweet tongues.” In the end he is left shrouded in mystery with a bitten crown.
As fascinating as the midrashic element of today’s piece is, it is the vibrant and lyrically explicit language that brings the scene to life. The beauty of the lyric is itself almost biblical: “my silk rubbing against their silk, my flesh would choose among / them, and my flesh was already sweet in their flesh.” It was no small effort on the part of the poem’s translator, Marcela Sulak, whose original work was featured on this series last week, to translate today’s poem from Hebrew into English while still maintaining elements of rhyme, meter, and lyric beauty. This is a piece as rich in English as in the original Hebrew, and which carries as much depth and beauty in both languages.
Want to read more by and about Orit Gidali?
Author’s Official Website (in Hebrew)
The Ilanot Review
Blue Lyra Review
Buy Nora the Mindreader on Amazon
Orit Gidali’s Blog (in Hebrew)
SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: MARCELA SULAK
By Marcela Sulak:
THE CASTING OF LOTS
1.
Dear Ahasuerus, it is eleven-thirty am and my number is one hundred and eighty-six. I feel the lack of communion striving for a higher purpose in this government assistance office, and it is beyond sadness and feet and the distance of aircraft and tires and inner-tubes on turgid rivers in midsummer with aluminum cans of beer. It’s not just the ones who pick discarded numbers from the floor and say they missed their turn. The flower-selling prepubescent children sniffing glue in paper bags outside the margins of the magazine I’m reading remind me of the laundry I hung up that must be dry by now, filled as they are with warmth and wings and snapping.
This office is a fine line. The wind from the open window rustles the pages of my magazine, pumps the lungs of paper bags, lifts the plastic shopping sacks discarded in the fields, fills the vacant sheets.
When God withdraws, we all must breathe a little harder.
2.
Are these hosts the kind of people who refrigerate red wine? I wasn’t breastfed, I smelled different. I never learned to desire consolation prizes. The water hisses from the tap, sliced by the tips of lettuce leaves. The cut-crystal conversation turns on the tiniest incisions. So little of it is about you, you have to address yourself as one of your second persons. At the click of one of our host’s glances, each woman at the table presses forward, like a bullet into the chamber. It goes without saying, this is how I see myself among the women, Dear Ahasuerus, you fuck.
3.
One of the trafficked prostitutes in the Tel Aviv shelter always carries a book with her. When she’s fucked up she reads it upside down. It’s a best seller, a thriller, a romance, so it doesn’t really matter the order of the events. She can describe them in detail afterwards, which she’ll do for you when you ask about her life.
HEBREW LESSONS: LESHALEM
To pay, to bring to a conclusion, bring to perfection, to make peace.
i.
I am not a piece
of cake—sometimes
the eternal á
la mode, which is
to say, I am
your mouth, not your whole
mouth, just the part
that, when full, worries
about its next meal.
ii.
The eggs must first come
to room temperature,
which is to say for
everything there is
time. While the cotton
opened white fists at her
window, one by one
my grandmother beat
six eggs by hand till
they were stiff. The hands
of the kitchen clock
tapped each fat minute,
the ready spoon curved.
The frothy batter
she poured herself into
the tube pan steadied itself
in the wood-fueled oven
and lifted. Those who ate
a single bite were filled
with an inexplicable
happiness. Sometimes
that was enough.
(Today’s poems originally appeared in The Bakery, and appear here today with permission from the poet.)
Marcela Sulak is the author of two collections of poetry and has translated three collections of poetry from the Czech Republic and Congo-Zaire. Her essays appear in The Iowa Review, Rattle, and The Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. She directs the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University, where she is senior lecturer in American Literature.
Editor’s Note: While living and working in Israel for the fall semester I have become inspired by the local English-speaking writing community, as well as the plethora of work being done in translation. I hope to be able to share some of the gems the local writers and translators are creating here with you on this series, beginning today with Marcela Sulak.
Of course I am interested in Sulak’s work, in part, because of its biblical interests and midrashic tendencies. Ahasuerus, for instance, from today’s first piece, was a Persian king and husband of Queen Esther. He chose Esther for his queen after kicking out his first wife, Queen Vashti, for refusing to display herself naked before his guests. The process of choosing Esther as Vashti’s predecessor was more like a casting call; all of the eligible virgins were gathered together, put through months of rigorous beauty rituals, then paraded around for Ahasuerus to choose his favorite from among them. Today, Sulak’s bent on this tale has her channeling these young women on display, noting the lack of communion among women under such competitive circumstances. Sulak eloquently sums up the experience: “It goes without saying, this is how I see myself among the women, Dear Ahasuerus, you fuck.”
But beyond the biblical explorations lie moments of brilliant lyric and philosophy. Moments that stop you dead in your tracks: “When God withdraws, we all must breathe a little harder,” “I am / your mouth, not your whole / mouth, just the part / that, when full, worries / about its next meal,” “which is to say for / everything there is / time.” Sulak’s is writing that considers the historical, the human, and the astronomical through the lens of the day-to-day. Her vivid imagery brings to life the scenes she paints, while the ideas she plants take the reader from the microscopic to the telescopic.
Want to read more by and about Marcela Sulak?
Marcela Sulak’s Official Website
Guernica Mag
Drunken Boat
The Cortland Review
Verse Daily
SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: DANUSHA LAMÉRIS
ARABIC
By Danusha Laméris
I don’t remember the sounds
rising from below my breastbone
though I spoke that golden language
with the girls of Beirut, playing hopscotch
on the hot asphalt. We called out to our mothers
for lemonade, and when the men
walking home from work stooped down,
slipped us coins for candy, we thanked them.
At the market, I understood the bargaining
of the butcher, the vendors of fig and bread.
In Arabic, I whispered into the tufted ears
of a donkey, professing my love. And in Arabic
I sang at school, or dreamt at night.
There is an Arab saying,
Sad are only those who understand.
What did I know then of the endless trail
of losses? In the years that have passed,
I’ve buried a lover, a brother, a son.
At night, the low drumroll
of bombs eroded the edges of the city.
The girls? Who knows what has been taken
from them.
For a brief season I woke
to a man who would whisper to me
in Arabic, then tap the valley of my sternum,
ask me to repeat each word,
coaxing the rusty syllables from my throat.
See, he said, they’re still here.
Though even that memory is faint.
And maybe he was right. What’s gone
is not quite gone, but lingers.
Not the language, but the bones
of the language. Not the beloved,
but the dark bed the beloved makes
inside our bodies.
(Today’s poem originally appeared in Rattle and appears here today with permission from the poet.)
Danusha Laméris’s work has been published in Alaska Quarterly Review, Poetry Northwest, Rattle, The Sun and Crab Orchard Review as well as in a variety of other journals. She was a finalist for the 2010 and 2012 New Letters Prize in poetry and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize four times. Her first book, The Moons of August, was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press poetry contest, and is set for release in early 2014. She lives in Santa Cruz, California and teaches an ongoing poetry workshop.
Editor’s Note: What riches lie within today’s poem. How alive the market of the poet’s memory. Reading this piece is like walking through a souq; the corridors are buzzing and vibrant, but be aware. Keep your eyes wide open. In the caverns below the language lie both treasures and warnings. Both the language and the bones.
Want to read more by and about Danusha Laméris?
Author’s Official Website
As It Ought To Be 