My Brother has been dead for fifteen years
My brother has been dead for fifteen years.
Mom says he was blue-eyed and brilliant
for his age.
Dad keeps quiet.
I only remember one evening:
I was young and what is engraved in me must be far from the facts.
For some reason we changed the direction of our beds
and were head-to-head.
We talked and talked, I don’t remember what exactly.
Since then, I remember everything: the shiva,
the shloshim, the questions on death that occurred to me, age five,
as if being called back to age three:
“Mom, did you see when you were little, someone like me?”
~
Quatrain for Nessi
On your rooftop in Rabat,
Reflecting on our tongue as act
of parting, our glance as freedom
Your mirror eyes as ocean front.
～
La Pell De Brau [the bull skin]
‘El lent record dels dies Que son passats per sempre” ( Salvador Espriu, Cementiri de Sinera, II)
He is searching for his end
No, he’s searching for the end of the search
Set to be prepared
He feels the void in his body.
Determined to mark
Disassembles all matter to what is and what was,
Resets, hesitates,
Crying like summer rain on sea.
He’s the bull
Sensing his skin
Entering the arena, searching
Can’t find his return
in return.
Chewing
The unchewable
Set to consider what does not matter
To know yet again
That he will never return to this
random café corner,
Catalan bookseller, mirror
Bare breast, aspiration
Others, lips mist, tongue
Foreign city, street lingo, avenue.
And the bulls will never return to the arena.
~
Natural Selections
I’d rather stare at ships than planes
Navigate with a paper map
Smells over tastes
Straight talk
Windows on doors.
Water, lukewarm water on hot
I prefer words,
to be in a minority (always)
to look back
I prefer short hair, black.
Black on white
Dark on light
I prefer maybe
And if I could choose again
city center over village plains.
Rivers, but then also seas.
I prefer to lay on my back
If I may, watch everything,
Shut my eyes, if I may.
______
Born in Tel Aviv, Lior Maayan is a tech executive with an academic background in physics, mathematics, and philosophy. He is a member of the Arabic–Hebrew translation groups at Helicon and Poetry Place. A 2023–24 ALMA–Metanel Fellow and a 2025 Yetzirah Cohort Fellow, he has also been recognized as a Weizmann Institute Poetry Laureate and is a recipient of a National Lottery grant. His work has been published in Granta, Asymptote, Paper Brigade, ARC, Kul Al-Arab, IHRAM, Ho!, and WriteHaus. His debut collection, That Green (edited by Shira Stav, Afik, 2019), was shortlisted by Haaretz. His second book, What is Now (2023), won the Clil Ecopoetics Prize and received support from the Rabinovich Foundation.