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.