Two Poems

Abstract

Two Poems by Shira Stav [Untitled] We lived on the edge of a poisonous swamp black alligators bathed in it every morning the exhaust tubes clamored and at noon we saw the thick vapor, opaque almost, rising and its molten smell reaching our noses, we could do nothing but breathe. And we clad our skins in long fabrics and we smeared our faces with powder and we stretched our lips into a smile and we called our names as if they weren’t foreign to us too and we delivered our faces in round lines and we traded words as if they were ours and over the luminous tablecloth we squashed bull testicles on our tongue without any wonder and the screenshot of the flickering heart rhythmically ticking, by itself, to itself, was screened in front of us on bright walls dazzling in its black halo, lingering, and only the insulting body kept getting wet when it wasn’t well covered, trembling when it was cold, dripping when hot, stinking when it wasn’t washed, getting fat, crumpling. On the Road And I have already stopped searching turning my head after every bearded man and son so that they take me with them and make me soup I pushed afar every mother, every father I fended off friends and distant brothers, I folded their attentive ears, skipped the expectant benches, asking for no substitutes, I have a home. It wobbles everywhere on poles behind me with a hungry voice implores me to enter it and fold my legs, take off my shoes, and sit down. Translations from the Hebrew By Maayan Eitan POETRY Shira Stav is a scholar of Hebrew literature and a poet, translator, and literary critic. She is a senior lecturer in the Department of Hebrew Literature at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. She has published two collections of poetry. Stav won the 2009 Bernstein Prize for literary criticism, the 2007 Teva Award for young Hebrew poets, and the 2013 Bernstein Prize for poetry. To read a bio of Maayan Eitan, turn to page 64. PHOTO BY SAMUEL SCRIMSHAW / UNSPLASH, SHIRA STAV / PHOTO BY ELYA LANDAU 74 WLT WINTER 2021 ...