White Print Inc
Marriage Ceremony, Kibbutz Nir Am, 1948
August
sun
ignites
this
country
of cloth
burning
white
the same
light
trapped
beneath
their skin
there is
more than
one
vow
today
their chupah
held
up
by four
slender
rifles
The Barn, The Viola
this barn still standing
where day and night
pass through the flesh
of rotten boards, paint
long since weathered away.
what shelter can it offer,
wind slipping through wood
the way hands whisper
across skin
the sway
of the bow waking
the viola
the reading girl
she is all white
afternoon
light comes through
the window
her night-
gown hangs open
exposing her breast
the whisper
of a finger
turning
the page.
this is what
you brought me
here to see:
the way the pages
are cut in stone
the straw
of her chair
breaking.
how much time
magni must have spent
chiseling away
at this moment.
all around us stone,
dark horses and warriors
swords drawn
in endless hunt.
what curator’s
wet dream
to put her
here in amid
this tangle of animal
parts, legs and tails
erect.
from another angle
the book
covers her
breast.
for years
you had only
seen it this way.
now i remember
what i saw in you,
soft spoken and precise
the way you averted
my eyes on kozna street,
how it was me
who leaned in
on the charles bridge
but here we are
again in a quiet room
the hot silence between us
and the girl of stone
reading
i open my book
and begin to read too
trying not to think
of the way your flesh
wound its way around mine
once in a borrowed flat.
you walk away
and look at old medallions.
the years pile up
and we cannot go back
to that page, the one this girl
will never turn.
Ultra Violet
She remembered that he grew violets
under the fluorescent lights in the cellar.
It was the 1970’s.
She wore pants.
He was dying.
That night she made eggplant, no
aubergine, the color of bruises,
the way they popped up
when least expected.
Their small heads watching her.
They reminded her of birds.
She pinned an orchid behind her ear.
Not the memory of it,
the way they grew in those trees in Florida,
she couldn’t remember their name.
To be tucked in and woven around
twilight, incandescent
purple nights.
She was melting.
Was it cerebrum or
cerebellum?
She remembered only
that he grew violets.