Category: poetry

In The Necropolis   In the cemetery of Beit She’arim inside a tomb from the third century paved with mosaic and decorated with wildlife reliefs […]

This slick black Pontiac, which traversed Route 66, when that was still a thing.   You twist your key in the ignition, but it won’t. […]

  One day, in the open-air, a poetry reading across Zhongnanhai—right in the Eye of China. You can’t recall a time, or a place, that […]

All who are hungry have a place at my table. My pleasure to serve.   ___________   Pesach Rotem was born and raised in New […]

  My grandmother used her hands to tend the geraniums with their bright red blossoms that sat in terracotta pots on the windowsill of her […]

—From the testimonies of Judy Abrams, Johnny Jablon, and Michael Kutz              Adult Being ten and small, my task with […]

I never heard my parents recite the Kaddish There were only the squat unlovely candles in plain glass jars set out on memorial holidays —the […]

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 […]

I am Called to the Torah Nothing in my home has ever hurt me, but I have heard the tic tic of the projector as […]

Is Anything too hard for the Lord?                                                             —Genesis, 18:14   Hineni Is that You, God, in the shaking leaves in the changed light […]

Brother                                                                                                  What, you travelled for an hour and waited for another just to see your brother?   We don’t know what it is […]

Letter to the Angels, Poland, 1919 Psalm 74.14—Leviathan appears as multi-headed sea serpent My beard is scraggly      clothes hanging on my skeleton      but             I […]

Undercover The yoga studio on Chicago Ave has a Palestinian flag behind the reception, next to a keffiyeh, next to a cut-out of a watermelon. […]

  “When do I get my arms back?” asks the boy as if they were two toys his mother took from him because they didn’t […]

Peacefully gliding, holding hands we engrave images of hope on black canopies of emptiness throughout the Universe You whisper in my ear: “We may soon […]

at the end of a cobblestoned street under a pale moon waning ocean air swirls under frayed awnings into a dimly lit cafe hum of […]

When the rain stops The western sky is a Carolina blue blotterwater-stained in cobalt, charcoal andegg shell, pierced with shafts ofochre and chrome awaitinggold pots […]

  Eucalypti stand in rowsof leg and bushy haunch,remains of fatted cattle ripped away. Next signs we’ll see are fires lining roads;or missiles spearing land; […]

  Look, it’s not the Kinneretbut the water is blue,and there’s an Israeli flag out frontby the concrete barriers put in placeto prevent a terroristfrom […]