I Had No Choice

I had no choice you understand

a woman aged forty-four and the makeup’s black is spreading the creases

already not covering the wrinkles I had no choice a few clowns stood there silent

I undid the buttons of my shirt they smiled and exchanged glances

I didn’t understand what they said I stripped off my black skirt

baring a not-bad waistline I didn’t know what they wanted

I unhooked my bra and white round breasts that were rather pretty

I already didn’t look them in the face when I squeezed out of my underwear

I didn’t have a choice understand this I was me was they

and I took a risk I had to prove

that I was me I had no choice

Whore

She spreads apart lines

on a keyboard,

invites a customer

arriving by chance

to go deep in and penetrate

bares herself in a bubble

through

transparent walls

a peek and a suck

for the right reader

gushing words

squirting letters

fearing muteness

addicted to applause

Maybe she will be called

a poet

after she dies  

Out of Tens of Thousands of Entrances

Out of tens of thousands of entrances

of uncountable stone houses

not one of them is mine

Many years ago I was the god of ants

with a dry branch I decided

who for death and who for life

who to drown in the old pail

and whose soul to give life to

with sweet challah crumbs

Out of all the gardens of daffodils

out of all the uncountable lemon groves

not one of them is mine.

I used to be the god of grasshoppers

with sewing-thread I tied them to rosebushes

and when I released them

they elegantly crossed

in a grand show of red and yellow canopies

across the wide lit field

I wanted to say—on the bridge

the sun clenches with fading fingers

the eyes of the tower lit up

deceitfully imitating life, setting,

and the gloom’s wound shines loneliness.

Titianesque Skies

And one woman used to

incline her white swan-like neck

toward purplish Titianesque skies

She was there behind the window

even though the skies were concrete skies of end-of-December

and the world was closed in a womb of water

I was pushed face-no-face in a bus of early risers

the window panes steamed-up and foggy

It was possible to hear her clearly when she screamed

no not screamed—laughed

her laughter ascending upward

and a pair of white strong wings

grew suddenly from somewhere

and carried her above the cold city soot

I swear that’s how it was

Letter to Sami

You would be so proud of me now

in a bra, black lace on white flesh,

swaying, in one hand a duster

and in the other, red wine

on two hours’ sleep, on an empty stomach,

shining the bathrooms and the floors

(praiseworthy females wear lace and drink blood)

and in a third hand types

email to an on-duty male

(an appropriate female will have a romance

only with a declared feminist)

maybe you saw me, you would be proud of me now

I chilled two cabernet sauvignons,

with a fourth hand I shampooed my hair

and shaved down there in the style of the mustache of,

with a fifth hand and a glove I searched for my daughter’s hamster

who chose to die under the refrigerator

and with the sixth I polished the aquarium

with the fish who escaped my seventh hand fluttering,

fixing me a cold look

cut from a piece of cruel broken glass

Oh, if you would see me now

you would say, what a praiseworthy female

 Yehuda's Light

No one avenged her honor

Mazal rummages in her dress of poverty

magically conjures golden ten-cent pieces

and counts out two shekels sixty to reach the junction of Yehuda’s Light

Mazalika little lady of luck not one cell worth healing

wounded outside and in

drowns her pride in a face worth two spits

as her legs fail and betray her

in mud as in life on the steps of the bus

collapsing toward Yehuda’s Light.

Getting Fucked by Poetry

Getting fucked by poetry

inhermother’scunt what will she find

words scathe and wound her

soft ones too getting fucked by poetry

spread your hands hey ho she is falling

don’t be late she is shattering

(isn’t shattering a word of rocks and wind and Atlantic Ocean

and a woman in one blue cape, her face pale and pained?)

What will she find that she hasn’t found?

An evil spirit she raises from herself

becomes whole stumbles

(lady, didn’t you spread yourself a second ago on the rocks?)

all of her laughing bitterly at herself a little too strongly

it seems strong too weak

but the terrible echo no not the echo the whisper