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.

I didn’t blow up on Wednesday
although I heard the sirens outside my locked
window and pawed the dusty floor with my feet. It
was electric, the linoleum, humming from hallways doors clicking closed like the pink gun the cab driver shot out
the window on Purim (he was a cowboy), like
plastic soldiers clipped down in play war.
I didn’t blow up on Wednesday.
I ran this over in my head, hands raking
kotel grooves,
and it got to me.