Friends & Enemies

Lotem Abdel Shafi

The heart dies without space for love, without a moral horizon:
think of it then as a bird trapped in a box.
My heart goes out with love to those beyond the fence;
only toward them can one really advance, that is, make progress.
Without them I feel I’ m half a person.
Romeo was born a Montague, and Juliet came from the Capulet line,
and I’ m a disciple of Shakespeare, not Ben Gurion —
therefore I’ ll be delighted if my daughter marries the grandson of Haidar Abdel Shafi.

The Blight

What’ s there to say? We didn’ t care for him much,
and you can’ t exactly commiserate
with someone you don’ t just not love
but almost (admit it) hate.
So the news just hung over us
like the dud summer weather we’ d had —
rain since June, the lawn sodden,
garden a bog, all slugs, late blight so bad
our sickened Beefsteak vines, our Sweet One Hundreds,
San Marzanos, the lot,
yellowed half black before the fruit had set,
which, when it did, began to bloat and rot
before it ripened — but like I say

At the Pub with the Museum Staff

As if  anyone has the desire   ...
Vickey trailed off, pouring another lager

There'll be nothing left
But fur and bone, as my lawyer once explained

To my ex, she resumed, tapping a long cigarette
On the bar. My, you're a bit snarky tonight

Said Luther. Maybe you need a change of  venue,
A beach with your breath on it

Oh, she replied, nodding towards the far corner booth,
These writers are so obnoxious

I wish they'd find a new place to complain.
Ha, said Hillary, they wouldn't know a good story

Sonnet: I Thank You

I thank you, kind and best beloved friend,
With the same thanks one murmurs to a sister,
When, for some gentle favor, he hath kissed her,
Less for the gifts than for the love you send,
Less for the flowers, than what the flowers convey;
If I, indeed, divine their meaning truly,
And not unto myself ascribe, unduly,
Things which you neither meant nor wished to say,
Oh! tell me, is the hope then all misplaced?
And am I flattered by my own affection?
But in your beauteous gift, methought I traced

Unravelling / Shock

A hole torn in the fabric of the world,
the web, the whole infernal weave
through which live-giving rain is falling
but mixing with the tears and with the blood.
Dead body-snatchers enter, the mega-corpses,
much in the news these days, enter and grind
bones, flesh and sinews down to dry tree bark,
mixing with tree bark, crawling with the demonic
beetles. They’ ll tell it later: “No one expected this”:
not one — patient, doctors, practitioners
of every stripe, no one except the one whose daily

Scenes of Life at the Capital

Having returned at last and being carefully seated
On the floor — somebody else's floor, as usual —
Far away across that ocean which looked
Through Newport windows years ago — somebody else's livingroom —
Another messed-up weedy garden
Tall floppy improbably red flowers
All the leaves turned over in the rain
Ridged furry scrotum veins

from Hyperglossia [She wakes up...]

She wakes up in the afterlife in a fog. Unaware that she had an enemy, she was unprepared when the villain approached to deliver a fatal head injury. Part of her soul is stuck in her tomb, but as is common, it has a fake door where intercourse can occur, while another part of her soul begins a new adventure in form and in name. Always a reticent young woman, in premature death her speech-producing anatomy becomes irrepressible as she tries to render her circumstance comprehensible.

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