Selected Poems

Huwara 2/26/23

“Israel’s military called the settler attack on this Palestinian town a ‘pogrom.’ Videos show soldiers did little to stop it.” —CNN

I was afraid to get my DNA tested
didn’t want to know
if my red hair
contained a quantum of Cossack blood,
the reason Jewish law
identifies the tribe
only by maternal side.
Rifles sabers torches
lead-footed boots across every threshold—
it didn’t help to run.
My grandfather as a child
watched Jewish men
get hanged from trees.

It seems we learned the lesson well.

In Huwara we become the Cossacks
four hundred settlers
kill Sameh Aqtash as he stands
in front of his sisters, in front of his daughters
we smash windows, set fire
to the houses, children locked inside,
set fire to the cars,
mutilate the sheep, the boy’s orange kitten,
leave them to die
together.
The government, the Czar, the IDF
all look on and nod.

The Torah says
kill everything but the fruit trees
and we do.

Now the streets are quiet
no one is outside
a silence
we carry in our veins
in our genes, our DNA
the reason pogrom means thunder
the way the ground crackles after lightning hits
the way the very dirt
recoils.

(“Huwara 2/26/23 first appeared in Chronogram)

Grandfathers

When his daughter asked him         He never said where he was born
again after the silence                       they just assumed it
what he could remember                 was New York,
he said he saw men                           where he was castigated for playing ball.
hanging from trees.                           the form to send his son to college asked—
his sister would mention only         Poland.
the garden next to the house           he was afraid it made him less American.
where they grew vegetables            he worked 7 days a week
tried to save enough for winter       for more
neither mentioned the mother        never mentioned his own father
or sister                                              orphaned, walking across the border
the way that Jewish next of kin       who came here,
must shovel dirt onto their own      the reason baseball had seemed a waste of time.

The way their children became my parents, the way we still are shoveling the dirt.


*This is a Cleave poem: read first down the left column, then the right, then across both to the last line.
(“Grandfathers” first appeared in Connecticut River Review and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best New Poets)

---

Needles

You breathe open-mouthed
the way horses never do
standing head against the wall
of your shed, leaning into it
because your legs cannot hold you.
I think what is this thing
I am able to do
with a syringe
how to know the very moment
when the needle on the meter of agony
passes the mark.
I have not eaten or slept for days.
When you can move at all
you stumble in circles.
You will not lay down.
Something very old tells you
to stay upright,
not to offer your jugular
to the wolves.
And I cannot tell
if I am the wolf
or your shepherd,
needle in hand,
plunging
bringing the ground
to you.

(“Needles first appeared in Mannequin Envy)

---

Open MRI

Not a divan on which to slowly lower
myself
surrounded by space,
pictures taken
behind my head,
not a chair
or hiding place
with room to move side to side
or exits within reach,
but two millstones
18 inches apart
and me the grain
laying in a metal stretcher
hockey mask snapped
over my face
pinning me down
raised up and stuffed
between the millstones
metal right above my nose
not open just
a catacomb
instead of
the grave.

(“Open MRI” first appeared in Viator)

Courage

In this city, the children live under courage like a roof in the absence of roofs in the absence of strong hands that haven’t been battered and torn. Their courage wraps around them like shawls while they breathe into their nebulizers take Ritalin and hum themselves to sleep with their mothers’ palms pressed soft against their cheeks. It serves as blankets and sneakers, holds the paint to the walls and the windows in their frames. They read courage in each other’s eyes like books about childhood, and pass it one to another tattered and dog-eared to the younger among them as they grow out of it like clothes.

In this city, the women live under courage like a roof in the absence of roofs in the absence of strong hands other than their own. They hold out courage like receiving blankets for their children when they’re born, wrap them up in it, drape it over them like shawls. They press their soft palms against their children’s faces as they sleep, rubbing courage into their pores like salve, watching them breathe with the rhythm of sleep until they themselves nod off in the absence of quiet in the absence of safe in the space that they carved out that day to live.

(“Courage” first appeared in Sojourner)