There is a paper
in my room, it is
between the paints and the seforim,
folded neatly in two. It says
“This is
a manifesto.”
It says, “Here is
a safe place for people who are tired,
tired of words like
“religious”
For people who don’t care if your kippah is knit
or black velvet
or a crown made of fur.
Who know that the
color of your shirt
does not determine the extent of your belief, who
are tired of hearing “modern”
as an insult.
Who have worked hard to find truth,
who have done our best to be good,
who have been told how
good we are or
how not, even if
we had not asked.
We are not the kollel wives of Har Nof, the
kabbalists of Tzfat, the
pilgrims of Hevron.
We are
all of them collectively.
We have never thrown
a rock, or spit
on a child.
We are the talmidim and talmidot
of David HaMelech,
whose own family thought he was a bastard child,
who wrote poetry and
composed on a harp,
who sang and
danced on a mountain top
whose differences made him holier.
We know
today his daughters would not
get into the best Beis Yaakov.
Our differences make us holier, and we
are not
afraid anymore.
Of desire to be
accepted
suppressing
the ways we connect to
the Infinite.
We have been taken out of context.
We have seen yiras shmaim replaced by
yiras rabbeim.
We are
changing
the minchag hamakom.
We are
a generation ready for
the descendant of David HaMelech and
Avraham Avinu, two leaders whose
courage to be different shifted the
course of the world.
We think “alternative” has become
a four-letter word because
it is a synonym for
“choice”
We are asking questions,
we are using
our gifts. You are
welcome to join us
for a meal, or maybe
a revolution.”
There is a paper in my room, it is
between the paints and the seforim,
folded neatly in two,
with spaces
at the bottom
for 13.4 million signatures.
It says
“This is
a manifesto.”
There is a paper
in my room,
I am looking for a door
to hang it on.

talking to my best friend abroad
he says
"i don't see what's
so magical
about reality"
i have
outgrown that place
like a
child in dolls' clothes

sitting in the cafe on the corner
a woman in thin wire glasses
asked me for a flame
i reached to give her one but what i pulled out
wasn't mine
"Lighters turn us all into kleptomaniacs" she half-shouted over the Nina Simone,
(her dress shirt turned before she did)
i turned the lighter over in my hand
a picture of a pencil ,something in italian
i said
"i've never seen this in my life"
she said, eyeing the potted plant
"but your hand has."

i said “im not going to marry you”

and you said “oh. do you want to get married?”

and i said “…no”

i was standing in the shower in someone else’s house when i told you i couldnt be with you

and you said “please don’t do this”

and i said “i’m sorry”, like i had to

and i said “goodbye,’ like i had to but i didn’t have to i didn’t do it because i had to i did it because

there’s an itch

you get in your feet

when you realize that all you have to do to be happy is, do

what makes you happy

and i decided i wanted that more than you.

last night when it rained i remembered what it sounded like

when it rained on your tin roof

and how you slept with your breathing shallow,

in case your grandma with dementia walked in and

called you by your grandfather’s name again. i remembered

the day you put the latch on your door to keep her out.

i bet you kept it there to keep me out too.

if i were still there

i’d be riding my bike to you now,

down that long stretch of littered sidewalk,

past that path where you smoked joints behind people’s yards at night

into the driveway by

your house, frame light enough to be carried away by wind

but the wind came

and it blew me away instead.

if i were still there i’d say happy anniversary, i love you so much

if i were still there it would be a lie

but i’m here, so it’s not, because

i can only love you from here, seeing what a fool you are

forgiving you anyway

so happy valentine’s day to your aforementioned  buddy

and happy valentine’s day to the high school that almost killed you

and happy valentine’s day to whatever music you’re making

whether its metal,

or blues,

happy valentine’s day to the safeway cashier

who knew what we were up to and the school theater whose floor we slept on

and the kisses snuck between sleeping bags

and the arms that for three years were my home

in your bed, by your star wars curtains

light every morning, breakfast with your mom

who added me on facebook

and could never spell my name

february last year i was in italy rinsing you out of my mouth

this year i’m in israel eating salt and reading old emails

taking a bath in an empty apartment

wondering when

you’re going to cut your hair.

The Princess                                                         ­     The Shepherd

the daughter of the king,                                           went pacing through the

and the child of nobody                                             fields looking for his sheep

left her New York city kingdom                                  lost some decades ago

for a                                                                ­          while he was sleeping a                  

Middle eastern wonderland                                       sleep he didn’t choose.

where the                                                              ­   He

musicians play outside,                                            dreamed of kings,

where the forests sing at night                                 of ancient stones,                                        

where the people cry into walls and                          of words branded in flame

the children                                                         ­     words as much                          

bring gas masks                                                        for him as for his father

to school.                                                          ­        and when he awoke his hair                  

I met her in a room where                                         was singed (like the heat of his

bread was baking                                                      will had cooked his  knotted                                                     ­                                                                         

and her softness                                                       chest grey) and he rose to his

bubbled up in the yeast, so                                      feet, his strong hands smoking,

I swam past her mote and                                       his congregation dispersed to                                                               ­ 

found her room of paintings                                    some far off meadow. So he                                                               ­                                               

of eye drops                                                            ­ wandered from bloom to bloom                                                            ­                                                                 ­               

of old woolen hats.                                                  distracted­, untouched for years                  

I slept in her room every                                          and petals lined in glass cut his

day for a month                                                      palms so deep a full                                                             ­                               

while she                                                              ­   burgundy wine bled out,                                                             ­                                                                 ­      

laid back on her down                                              so he blessed it,  

comforter throne                                                      raise­d his hands to drink, and his                                                              ­                                            

her first love on the telephone                                 leather-bound arms cried out to Gd.                                                              ­                                                              

with her sunglasses on to                                       But in his field stood another flower,  

hide her royal weepy eyes                                      thorns worn thin, hued so                

and a crown of tangled hair,                                    brilliant and sad that he,                    

brown as the leaves on the ground,                         seeing royalty approaching,                                                     ­                                                                 ­  

soft as the light caught                                            chose it from the brush

through smoke in                                                    kissed its petals

the window. Out in the field to                                 hesitantly, gently                                

see the seasons change a                                         and handed

Shepherd handed her                                               the Princess                                                         ­                               

                                                  a Rose

                  and for an instant, the three hung suspended,

                  her hands soft and painted, his perfumed

                  sharing a rose red as kingship, as remorse.

So the Rose went back with the Princess, where her kind and

graceful hands brought it to her people

and it shone its colors bright and moved the peasants to tears with its promise

But as the people gathered to hear its petals sing, the Rose bloomed richly

thinking of the hands of its Shepherd

out looking for his congregation, ready to build a kingdom of his own.

There is
no poetry
in me.
There is only
people and
things and
places where I should have
been hours ago.
I am empty cigarette carton
I am
bleeding nostril
I am sweaty neck.
I am calloused feet.
I am going to shoot up
a mall
or maybe
eat some hummus
or maybe
take the train home.

Sitting
on the
edge of
my window
smoking and
watching the
light
of
my
reading lamp
on
the
woven
elephants
hanging
beaded
above
my
bed
-
I thought
you
were
singing
in
your
room,
but
realized it's just
Yerushalayim
that
hums
at
night.
Sing me to sleep, Holy city -
center of the universe,
light of my life.

Sometimes I sit, 18 and overheated
in the front room of the men's heritage house, where I
play someone else's guitar and twist my hair in my
palms like
yellow bundles of uncooked pasta I  might
break or
bend or
eat out of restlessness.
Tonight my sandal worked idly, pressing
its shadow into my leg when your electric
warm gaze flipped on
my lightswitch
and clicked. Out of my beige office boredom
came you - toothy.
But in high school you hit on my
best mate's sister, so, perched next to me on the
only plastic chair at the loudest bar in town, I crouched
down in a puddle of beer onto
raised toes and mentioned your name and he,
being British and emotionally constipated, muttered
something about you between football shrieks and cigarette drags,
sipped his Guiness and saw.

My first winter without you
I spent New Years with my hands in an ancient wall
and the stone set my eyes on fire
each a candle, one burning for shabbat,
one burning for you like a yartzeit that wouldn’t dwindle
mourning your hands, my face buried in your chest.
You are
so tall.
You were drinking somewhere
and you didn’t want my prayers.
My first winter without you
I filled notebooks and found new arms
I learned what it is
to be afraid of dying young
I learned what it is
to feel home
and you
are not it.
My first spring without you
I floated on the Dead Sea at dawn
and wiped the oil off the wounds in my knees
I prayed with my eyes closed in the marketplace and
filled my fists with the fruits of the season.
I ate books for breakfast.
I spent nights in dim hidden rooms playing bongos until my palms shook
My first spring without you,
I wrote my first song.
I waltzed in the middle of a street party
where the DJ blasted some pounding techno anthem of a budding culture and
I, behind a feathered mask,
kept slow measured time and watched the bloom of my own.
My first summer without you
I had a beer poured over my head by a boy whose
wide shoulders and broad-mouthed accent sent me
leaping back in gaping toothy laughter. I shook
my hair out and chased him into the the Armenian quarter,
but he didn’t run. Daytime
we all baked in our own salt,
marinated in sweet new friendships and nostalgia for
some California coastline - for nights in your living room
with its tin walls and landscapes taped up.
If I looked through your couch cushions now
I might find, I’d think, some bobby pin or blonde hair.
On your wrist a hairband whose
owner you’d forgotten.
My first summer without you
I was spit on by a stranger for the first time, and a
man chased after the car, holding his kippah on his head,
his anguished yelp filling with dust and car exhaust while my
things sat in boxes in America, not belonging to me anymore,
or me not belonging
to them.
My first fall without you
it rained so softly the children went outside and opened their mouths
This week a man told me that redemption
is remembering who you were before you lost yourself.
I remember who I was before you,
something gentle, something the
very lightest shade of grey.
You would not recognize me if you saw me now,
calm in the eyes.
Three years together, one year apart,
and not a single poem for you,
until now.
Happy birthday.

How do you explain

to your children that the

horrors of the world are real?

How will I tell my son, We

found a place you can call home but

your bus might not make it to school.

Do not look too Jewish in this part of town

Do not play in the train station

Do not get used

to the weight

of a machine gun.

Or look my

daughter in the eye and say, someday

you might say “no” and someone stronger than you might

not listen

You will not tell me

Know that this happens a lot

Know that your wrists pinned against a

backboard will

echo in the way you move your hands

for as long as you let it

But

human hands aren’t as heavy as metal shackles

And I’m so sorry

but I won’t be able to

take the weight for you

You’ll wake up in the morning

That I can promise you

You’ll wake up

and your lungs will fill with air

whether you tell them to or not.

One day

I will hold someone

small, with my face

and they’ll cry and I’ll say,

I know.

I know you’re tied with little yarn strings to the last life

I know it hurts to be here and

(honestly)

you’re never going back

But

the older you get the less you’ll remember

what it was like

before you had a body

when you were made of ash and infinite light

You’ll convince yourself you live here and

that your hands are you,

But remember that once you were boundless

Inside my body, without yours.

There is a concept in religious circles here

(and other shapes;

rectangles, rhombuses,

rorschach blots freckled with faith)

that the way to get closest to a person

is to not touch them.

So

they laid in your car side by side,

her elbow holding her head up like

an exhibit on falling, on disbelief

and you puffed up your unshaven cheeks

and blew in her face.

It blew her eyelashes back and they

bowed their blonde-headed arms at you,

They heard you tell her a

bedtime story with your eyes closed

and they laid down to sleep too, lacquered down with

air conditioning fluid brushed wet through the desert nighttime air.

At dawn,

you promised you wouldn't touch her
as you

lit a cigarette and held it to her mouth,

her lips an inch from your knuckles

and she breathed you in and blew

the smoke out the car window where it

hung suspended like a ghost.

An empath and a mirror walk into a bar

and the empath says

I see myself in you.


Let me buy you too much wine and

kiss your collarbones and

twiddle my fingers on your skull.


and the mirror says,

Yehoshua (what a beautiful name)

Yehoshua, the prophet. I am so tired

of doing the right thing

My knees are sore I

want

my field of poppies.


So the Prophet says You can rest in my field

if you let me know you, the parts you keep

tied to your hips like bells, or like weights

that clinking prisoner's hymn strapped to your chest.

Know that I know you, even

the parts you left unsaid (Especially those.)

He says  

I want to have

my parents' strength.

I want a stranger to vomit in my bed.

I want to crawl into your head and hurt you with

your reflection. Open up your mouth and

I can put the words in myself, but I can't promise my

tongue won't taste like 20 years of forged metal

(And I

can't promise every pretty girl in town doesn't have

my metallic tinge behind her teeth.)


(So she says)

Why can't you stay still?

(and the Prophet says)

I'm always running late

(and she says)

I've stopped running

"listen
beloved i dreamed
i thought you would have deceived
me and became a star in the kingdom
of heaven" - ee cummings


listen
love, I am
looking for things to promise you.
(i promise) I have noticed the lines next to your eyes
I promise I am a foreign country
i'm not trying to be
I promise sometimes I look in the mirror and I see a child
and I am right.
Build me a castle
made of cigarette butts and litchi fruit
and (i will) wear my crown of white hot ash
and i will burn my Hebrew name into your palms like
some catholic wednesday
like some stolen bicycle
like your sidelit kindness in the cold.
(go home)
and i will write you a song
sweet enough to
wash the taste
out of your mouth.

Somewhere between
space
(and)
Gd
there's a star
made out of all the seconds you
cleared on the microwave
just before it was done because
you didn't want
to hear
it beep.
That is where time
goes when it's mad
at its parents, to play
old records and smoke
cheap cigarettes and
complain that its
best friend is dead.
My best friend/is dead/And although she would never sleep in the bed with me/And although she doesn't fit in the dollhouse anymore/I  dreamed she was gone the day before it happened/and dreamed she took a part of my life with her. That
is where
your thoughts go
the first time
you
don't miss someone as much as you did yesterday. I am not proud/that I am waiting/for tomorrow/you are that star/and I will sit on you and dangle my feet in the water/Meet me/in the Mediterranean/so I can kiss your toes goodbye.

Somewhere between
you
(and)
me
(and)
washing my hands in the morning,
I learned
how to lose things.

If someone were

standing on top of a mountain of sand (maybe on a camel, maybe with a cough)

along the Dead Sea at four this morning they might have heard

two voices

one accented thickly enough to leave an aftertaste,

one small forced into lower registers for old reasons echoed in new habits

bouncing along the water like insects, like light

“Talk to me in Hebrew” “Want

to see me walk on water?”

”I have the same handwriting as

my mother” ”Let’s start a religion”

“You can see it in the R’s”

”I was in a war” ”My shoulders

are turning brown”

“Summer is coming” “Your back is smooth”

”I don’t believe in anything” “I got on a plane”

“My fingers are salty”  ”There’s

mud in my mouth”

“Your hair is blonder than yesterday”

“I don’t

love you”

If someone had been

standing on top of a mountain of sand (maybe itchy, maybe pregnant)

along the Dead Sea at four this morning they might have seen

two bodies

one white, one brown

floating on the surface, the light coming over the ripples like a thousand slaves carrying morning on their backs

one head on one chest, one palm on one shoulder

“Nothing can

live in this water”

“I’m trying”

My friend Shira

whose name means song and legs mean trouble

wrote a lovesong to God,

hoping He’d buy her redemption

but instead He bought her a sandwich

from the central bus station,

salmon on whole wheat no cucumbers.

So

I sat with her on the top of the nearest mountain

flashlight in my mouth, rock in my shoe

and watched the buses run later than they’re scheduled to,

hoping my epitaph would read

“She might’ve

She might’ve

She might’ve been wrong”.

I remember the day you realized you always write about water

and I always write about fire

I also the remember the week I took too much ibuprofen and

slept with my eyes open in the back of your car while

allison stole from the salad bar at whole foods and

here we are on two different continents

writing poems for men on circled corners of maps

you ripple, me ash

The day all of Israel fell asleep,

bald men in the shuk

lowered their heads onto eggs and squash

and snored out spice and

the tourists

dropped their cameras and lined the streets like

new roads made of

backpack to cover old stone

and

little children watching littler children

sharp in their shabbos dresses

laid in the mud and dug their white-tighted knees into the dirt and sighed

and I

sitting in my room

smoking tea and

standing on my head

forgot

about my broken foot

forgot

the time I turned my

stomach toward yours squinted my

eyes and pretended we were dancing

didn’t ask myself

How many seas I’d sail before

I could sleep in the sand

and I curled up to my

blanket with somebody else’s blood on it

and yawned.

Today all of Jerusalem broke silent,

the buses stopped and passengers froze

sirens singing then stopping one by one like electric geese shot down,

but no one was sleeping

only grieving

the fallen soldiers of a country young as me, old as dirt.

Your friend asked me if I knew I was the daughter of a king

(I slipped a flower under your dorm room door)

reaking of alcohol wrapping his tsitzis around his fingers

(because I saw you crying, and

smoking a joint behind the quesadilla stand)

I wonder sometimes what I

couldnt leave behind

if I tried.