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