i am an artist from israel and this is my art

children’s crusade

you’re talking to me

like you assume i’m wrong

when i come home i see the

lights on in your kitchen window

and it makes me feel sick

i used to stare in the faces

of the girls whose fathers just died

to see if something had dislodged

and they’re happier now

do you remember

when you were younger

how some crying felt like

if you truly let it go

it could flip you inside out

with your wet inside flesh

exposed to the world

and then the hope that when

the mouth reswallows itself

and your body returns to its station

that you could finally

do it differently this time

these days the smoke factory near

my house resembles

a chapel through the trees

the fence surrounding it

is charged with 7000 volts

58 times more than you need

to kill a human

a figure we can only

shake our sorry heads at

and somewhere close,

a fruit dies on the vine

first baptist church

i brought back home for her

a tea bloom from Romania

it’s unfurling like a fist

in the hot water in front of me

it sat long enough in the cabinet

where she might not notice it missing

she notices everything

but maybe not this one

every hour on the hour

a loud train goes by

i called them ancient biblical insects

when i didn’t know the word for horsefly

from my room i heard you say

ideally, you want to be

the only capitalist in the room

i didn’t know what that meant

but i knew it was disappointing

i press the scratch our tomcat

left on my arm

and beneath the skin something wriggles

i’ve ceased to become impressed

with how loudly the frogs croak out here

i’m looking at the moon with my ears ringing

thinking of how i blushed when i reassured you that yes, he is Christ-like

because by that we meant different things

i’m watching you get torn limb from limb

all i can do is press my toes into my shoes

and count the stairs on the way up

i remember in those new wild days

i behaved like a foreigner

i smoked in the bathtub with the windows closed

and forgot words i previously knew

Eucharist and Urushiol

back when i was still thinking in your voice

i thought this part would be harder

but i’ll put it into words you can understand:

fish will eat your spit

before they know what it is

will be the last thing you’ll ever preach to me

before we have forgotten each other,

can i ask

when a stream empties into a river

can it still feel the pulsation of

the two-chambered hearts in its midst

or does the current hum gray forever