Sunday, October 1, 2017

DORIT WEISMAN


DORIT WEISMAN

SESTINA FOR A CASHIER

Hershey’s chocolate 7290000255903
729000287248 and 7290000135700
peach nectar and Chinese pickles
my daughter is wandering what is she doing
cracked olives 7290000046006
this cash register’s broken, you have to enter everything twice.

This week I worked my shifts twice
I want to go home before three
a large roll an empty bottle times six
turkey breast in marinade 7290002400
a feast this woman is making
a quarter of a chicken and Chinese pickles


Sitting here hours like a Chinese worker
bread and more bread that’s twice
what am I doing what am I doing
another 729000035707 and more 729000035703
72964415 it all looks to me like zero
I’ll go back home at six


That man acts like a child of six
everyone’s taking the Chinese pickles
7290002706724, 7290002660200
Today I’ve seen this woman twice
and this time makes three
and for my husband what am I doing

Hot chocolate and a six pack of beer
with the new wrinkle what am I doing
I’m tired and I see double and triple
Chinese pickles Chinese pickles Chinese pickles
someone else is taking it twice
and inside my head is black and empty



7290002989943, 9290003067540
7290002415107 what is hot pepper doing
7290000046006 twice
7290000047362 times six
7290000457253 again Chinese pickles
7290002871248, 7290000135703

7290000135703 and two times zero
again these Chinese pickles what am I doing
I want to be a girl of six think twice.
T
RANSLATED BY LISA KATZ



UNTITLED 

I do not want to be
A breast poet.

I want my breasts to be sound and sub rosa,
taken for granted, not written about

and certainly not by me.  My hands shake.
Someone sings about leaves in the wind.

My mother asks how I can do this
and still dance.

Yellow fluid leaves a stain
a nurse says will come out in the wash.

Another one stands behind me, on the left, watching,
she would like to put a hand on my head.

The spotlights dim, darkening
the room.

TRANSLATION: LISA KATZ
From: Where Did You Meet the Cancer?
Publisher: Carmel, Jerusalem, 2006



MY MOTHER, 56 YEARS LATER

The years fall off her, as in another poem, tougher,
and there, on the tree-lined boulevard, she walked lightly,
leaning on her stick. Mom, I said to her, I want you
running like a girl, running on the boulevard,
I want to photograph you running on the boulevard,
but she didn’t run, my mother, I photographed her weeping,
the leaves falling around her. Nothing has changed
in 56 years, she said. Sat on a bench on top of a rocky mound,
as she did many years ago, forgetting the inflammation in her gums and the pain in her knees. With a soft, quiet face, listened to the leaves.
2005, Dorit Weisman

TRANSLATION: 2006, RACHEL YAKOBOVITCH




RED GIANT

I was angry with my husband because
in order to recycle and preserve the planet
he added to the wash
a towel, a sheet, socks and underpants.
The television above the treadmill says
life will end in another 50 billion years
when the sun turns into a red giant.

Time flies. I better go back and make up.

TRANSLATION: 2012, LISA KATZ



60 CATS

My aunt Tara already has 60 cats
That was revealed on our last phone call.

When I stayed with them she was feeding
A one eyed, resentful and hostile cat

For another cat she tried her best to get rare
Medications from a doctor friend, in a nearby hospital

And some of her cats were so weak,
That she had to feed them intravenously.

She lived with Lali in a big house
Near a forest, in a suburb of Boston.

60 cats, that’s a lot of milk bowls
Scattered all over the place, not to mention the smell.

The sick ones she kept in the basement.
They had colored tags on their ears

Yellow meant they could roam around the house,
Red meant they could also go outside.

My uncle, Lali, bought an improved computer and a laser printer
And converted his shares into beautiful graphs.

I wanted to write that during breakfast
They were not talking, but that’s not true,

They usually don’t have them together,
Breakfast, lunch or dinner

Twenty seven years ago,
They were my model couple

They were the first married couple
I’ve ever heard say sexy things to one another.

(FROM THE BOOK THE DAYS I VISITED THE CUCKOO'S NEST)

DORIT WEISMAN

Ms. DORIT WEISMAN lives in Jerusalem, Israel.  An award-winning poet with international repute. A multidimensional writer, she is also a novelist, a translator, an editor, a film-maker and a literary organizer. Recipient of the International Poetry Prize Alfonso Gatto 2016 (Salerno, Italy), the respected Yehuda-Amichi Prize for Poetry and the Prime-Minister Prize for Israeli writers, 2003. She published 10 volumes of poetry, one prose book, one translation book (poems of the writer and poet Charles Bukowski) and she is the editor of an Anthology of Israeli Women Social Protest Poetry – "The Naked Queen". Her poems have been translated to many languages: English, Italian, French, Spanish, Turkish, Arabic and more. She is the founder and editor of the Poetry Program in the Israeli TV (Channel 98), which runs several times per week.


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