|
|
About
Contact Archive Donations Subscribe to Today's Situation | ||
 News from Israel
|
 Peace: Educational Resources
|
 Pleasure:Poetry and other Arts |
 Ariga's Amazon Bookstore
|
Home
Poetry || SubmissionsPoems by Rochelle MassI should have gone to China She remembers when they found the chair in that special shop in Zichron, bought the fabric with the roses, had the Russian in Afula renew the stuffing, when the basket was full of plump figs from the tree in the back. The walls were smudged then, crowded with amateur paintings. She added more till it was uneven with seashore, flowers and a startled portrait of someone’s mother. She touches this plate, that basket, taking one not the other. The pile at the door grows. She pulls at her shirt, frantic to find things that are truly hers, runs her hand along the table she had set, served, cleared and wiped a thousand times for him. She squeezes her hands round her crystals, amethysts, slices of quartz. I’ll leave them for a while, they should stay here, remind him that I was, that they were mine. From the shelf, over the stove, she takes a pot, and a square pan shaped for making dutch pancakes, puts it near the door. That stool from India - Shula brought it for me - she slides it under the chair with the velvet roses. The knife I use for mangoes she opens one drawer after another till she finds it with the wooden spoons and cake servers. You are like your mother he snarls, she hisses: God save us from being like your parents. Two rooms wait for her - white as linen. Nothing hanging yet or placed in the corner for her husband to straighten, frown at. The neighbor’s boy takes the chair and the stool from India off the truck. Dates roll on the open earth, the stench of new rot as they reach the steps of her apartment. She shakes her head: I should have gone to China, taken the train to Vietnam, stayed over in Australia. Gone to the fortune teller in New Delhi. Love in Ludlow ```` Susannah works in a wine shop in Ludlow where you can get crisps and sweets, Beers and Breezers, good wines too; has a lover, she says, the husband of her friend who’s a bitch. I cook for her on Sundays, she says, a witch. The husband is nothing special but he loves me – not tall, not rich and she’s bitter, the wife, and he loves me stressing the ‘he’ as she rolls a red Merlot from South Africa long-wise on a sheet of bottle green paper, twists the ends. Do I love him? Well, he loves me and she’s stingy with him. Susannah lights a fag, and looks out into the street. I’m not you see, she says turning to the customer. It’s good to be loved, says the woman at the till who’s been listening hard, then turns to a man with a six-pack who asks about the lottery, love is the hold of one person on another. I couldn’t imagine needing anything more. Sometimes I need him so, I can’t see straight, says Susannah raising her fag towards the window. Love is a tangle of feelings, says the other woman, something you’ve never seen before. She waited a moment before handing change to the man with the six-pack. The sun on the ceiling of the wine shop painted stripes that widened as afternoon moved on. How reliable are feelings in the heat? asked Susannah. The air gets so thick I wonder if I know what’s going on. I’m tired of days that are the same, summer does that. I’m afraid it’s going to close me in. I don’t have all the answers, used to wait for something to happen. Not any more. .. Home is where you go ```` Clouds flat as English dinner plates hang in the slick sky. Still wrapped in British wool, my boots are marked where snow crept over the sole, where ice licked the pavement. The light is blinding as I look at the Alps. The snow looks necessary there settled in buttermilk. The sky, starched and scalding: I turn away as coffee is served: a small muffin, mint wafers also. The man across the aisle laughs - ragged, rum-filled. I push the window shade higher, yank the blanket to my shoulders. On the screen – a woman says: I’ve never lived in a place that doesn’t have wheels, now I want a place with a patio, overlooking the sea – a table with an umbrella, drink chocolate milk as the sun goes down. Home is where you go when you fall she says. No one can tell you how to get there. The sky bleeds white, points to the shore, then steadies. Tel Aviv is bathed in noon, shades of citrus; tops of trees are where they should be. Cars twitch along. The ground crunches. Blue slips away to let the runway in. Dry bushes mark highways on land waiting for rain. Rochelle Mass -- Canadian born, I have lived in Israel for 30 years now, most of that time on a kibbutz in the Jezreel Valley, now living in a community on the Gilboa Mountains. I am a translator, editor (of Kibbutz Trends, a cultural quarterly) and text writer. RochMass1@netscape.net Today's Situation
Back to the top
If this page was useful, please consider making a donation or use Amazon links at Ariga to go to the biggest online store in the world and help keep Ariga going. Click over to the bookstore, check out Ariga's latest recommended book, or visit one of the subject areas that interest Ariga visitors: Yiddish || Middle East Affairs || Military Affairs || Religion || Hippotherapy (Horses and Feldenkrais) || Women's Issues || Pop Culture || Cooking || American Issues || Or click over to Amazon's Top 100 Best Sellers
|
Ariga Recommends:
|
