Am Ha’aretz*
In the gardens of givat ram
We never saw
Solomon’s turtledoves
For seven years the winter
And the rain she and I
Strangers in the midrahov she and I
Cracked cobblestone
Once a market road
Deserted on a sabbath evening
All the jackals are gone
And every day in july
Tempting that last stretch of sky she and I
The end so close we lied
Beyond reach somewhere the mountains in the mountains
Among lotus shrubs in the Galilee she and I never saw
Wild goats rising up
In contest the grackles
Picking off their parasites
And what of those nights
In the snow in the snow
Sweeping the midrahov
Those nights when I was repossessed
By am ha’aretz
After I lost her
In ammei ha’aretz
These roads I do not know I do not know
her arms anymore her arms
those child’s songs
in arabic when I was a summer day
falling
into the tongue of a woman she and I
those lost gardens of the desert
that die each night
in ammei ha’aretz
* In the Hebrew canon, “the people of the land” (the singular am ha’aretz) refers to the Jews. The plural ammei ha’aretz refers to foreigners, or non-Jews living within Eretz Yisrael.
Gods Our Ancestors Did Not Fear
—after Joseph
You say we don’t name our children
after the living
and if I tattoo my body
I won’t be buried
in this house of eternity
As if I ever said let me in
I’m not the right one
I’m breaking night
in a palace where the roof the roof
I let that motherfucker burn
I’ve dreamt my way out of prison
and I’ve still got a bone to pick
with what went down in canaan
Blood is not blood
like it was before
I’m more than this body
you spared and sold
I saved a great house
while you a famine bore
As if I’d let my own grave grow cold
As if I couldn’t send you into the wilderness
for spilt blood on my coat
for twenty pieces of silver
for twisting my name
in our native tongue
beware the dreamers
you leave for dead in the cistern
we run our branches over the walls
we never stay in the ground long
and you will come when we call
only we come back wrong
only we come back
with the foreign gods hanging on
_______________________________________________________________________________
Born to a Mexican mother and Jewish father, Rosebud Ben-Oni is a CantoMundo Fellow and the author of SOLECISM (Virtual Artists Collective, 2013). Her work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Arts & Letters, Bayou, Puerto del Sol, and other publications. In Fall 2014, she will be a visiting writer at the University of Texas at Brownsville’s Writers Live Series. Rosebud is an Editorial Advisor for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts (vidaweb.org). Find out more about her at 7TrainLove.org
