A Kiss | Change | Dark Country

A Kiss

The velvet woman sits across from me on a lounge chair and caresses

what is she caressing, I wonder

she has long fingers and red fingernails

treat me to a manicure, I want to say,

trim this moustache and these brows

spreading everywhere it’s a crisis

on par with what’s happening in the Territories

on the streets, the cost of living,

and the plight of livestock slaughtered for consumption

it’s forbidden to speak of this

I need to quiet down and moisten my lips with truffle oil

and look for love and work

it’s inconceivable

that this is life

this is life

but this is life

that velvet woman looking so clean

with her lush glossy hair knows

that this is life

she’s never felt my fear

she’s always leaned left

frequented art exhibits

traveled abroad to visit friends

she inherited an apartment and a job

mental clarity

answers and a good mood

and it’s unbearable, I think

for me and the rash I got not too long ago

and these notions about a salon

and this parallel world one can draw closer to

and immigrate to without a foreign passport.

Stop playing this game!

I tell myself

Go outside!

Go to the lavish sky the crimson

cloud the sun’s glow

Go to the jade leaves!

Instead, I’m on a couch and she’s facing me,

and she’s velvet and she can

give me a red kiss.

Change

stone and that stone is a moon and the moon is a chick and the chick is a feather and the feather is a ripped bag and the bag is a green velvet dress and the dress is a curtain and the curtain is a house the house is a door and the door opens into a starry night and a giant orange moon in the sky moves the sea and I am a sea moving toward a street and the street is dead and the dead are bones and in the bone there is a large hairy animal and in the animal there is time white time the whiteness is a hidden treasure and the treasure is money moving in every direction a wiggling snout and the snout is a brown mother and mother is an opening and the opening is there so what so what is the opening undressing still undressing still naked and the naked peeling to peel is to descend and to descend is to take off to take off to steal away is to surprise to grab unprepared to land in the void to bring all the attention to scare so much to be full and full is aimed at itself and when it is blocked and blocked remains outside and the outside is a city and the city is concrete and concrete is a holy ark and a holy ark is a body a man’s body and man is one word and the word is stone

Dark Country

There’s a boy in you about three
Years old who hasn’t learned a thing for thirty
Thousand years. Sometimes it’s a girl.

—Robert Bly, “One Source of Bad Information”

They saw nothing in me. A woman without scars, whitish skin,

dark eyes, a man hanging on her shoulder.

I had nice clothes, a cleaning lady, days full

of thoughts on the situation. I would press

the sheets and rearrange the pillows, treating the balcony

as if it were an office and the living room as if

it were a closet, I mixed up my meals. No one

saw a thing. Sometimes I allowed peeks

through the belly button, tongues on the ring, hands

stroking crevices, apertures, my heart. I didn’t consent

to winter dampening my hair, tears

in public, or let the cloud sitting next to me reveal

itself. No, it’s mine,

it used to be. I loved this pale

dark country, breathlessly

I found myself trampled at its gates like a little bird,

curled up, over and over I found a gate and

another gate to get there. That was my dark country.

Grand speeches, grand people, the great big world, everything

shrank inside of it. Another woman had to come and triumph.

Hebrew poems originally published in בצע. Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 2014.

Image by Antonio Carrau.