Josette Akresh
Leaving

Light lift of foot as I slip step,
lose my balance,
hold on rough corner of your elbow.
Skin tough, thick as elephants. I retrieve
fingers and lips, reflex from
lions' jaws snap snap

The low orange moon, plush as peach skin,
feigns romantic. Tacit calm in
the dim evening eight p.m. wrinkles
cols as if just before dawn,
puckered air shimmering in pinches of tension,
hypnotic, prune-dry like skin in the shower,
thirsty touch of almost
gone.

You avoid my look into your mind,
predatory stare from across
the distance of lips.
Tell me why you're sure
of our implicit stability,

or by sunrise I'll know by light touch,
empty embrace,
the heaviness of your flesh
after you collapse, out of
breath, full of pleasure,

warm savored lips open like a smashed pomegranate.
smell of almost overripe berries,
Sleepy as baby breath.
sound. Without worry.

Maybe now I'll rise and leave you,
indifferent, steam off
a geyser. You'll lie there,
eyes closed. Complacent, snoring.
A cat in the sunshine, slow to stretch.

Grandfather

We hoard children's vague recollections
In vain, the histories escape us, buried
With grandfathers, shrouded under stone,
Old country stories of oceans and immigrants'
Sandy feet, harmony of Mediterranean sea salt,
Coated coarse voices raised in Ladino songs.

The language of my grandfather's songs,
Indigenous to Spain, his recollections
Life desert sandstone, pieces coarse as salt,
Dissolved in vague memory of Israel, buried
With orphan's daily routine, immigrants'
Troubles, brushed off sandy feet on hot stone.

Miles from Hebron, the golden city shone in stone
Of holy origin, where orphanage songs
Ran through corridors of his immigrant
Mind. They visited, he told me, his recollections
Muddled like rain-muddied streets, buried
Under sheets of Jerusalem seasonal showers, tears of salt.

The children lack the language. The ocean salt
Of hardship never stung soft skin. With spirits of stone
They built new families with ancient buried
Stories of possibility, hope of old songs
Sung in voyages, ship recollections,
Strength found in mother's memory and immigrants'

Vulnerable voice, and immigrant's
Aspirations, handled over and over, the salt
Of fear in open wounds, moving with waves, recollections
Of Hebron, orphanage, trip to Jerusalem, traveling like a stone
In the current of memory. I asked you for songs,
The words, the ladino I have never heard, buried

With your voice, covered in earth, buried.
When you died, the phlegm in your breath, an immigrant's
Old world disease, the children's songs
Returned to me. When the dirt shoveled on your shroud, salt
Filled my body in torrents of sea waves, stone-
Like regret covered the harbor of my throat, brought recollections

Of your fish smell and the ocean I knew as a child, the salt
That covered your buried hands. Your immigrant's
Strong voice, my Jerusalem-stone recollections.

Back to Issue 2, 1999