Planes' Plie

"I have become weaker than the wind", you said, "spinning in each direction like a ballerina with a broken leg", and in between the loathing for your mixed metaphors, I thought of a plane, of the wind pushing and pulling to bear you away from me, like the slow withdrawing of our thighs beneath mud-colored sheets.

I was menstruating, and resentful of a world that told me the blood between my thighs didn't mean anything, and somehow this was liberation. Men never had to be liberated - even though, according to Rousseau, they were everywhere in chains: "It's different when you're enslaved to yourself, because, in addition to being the slave, you're also the master",  I said, on our first date, but you just laughed and poured me more wine. I got so drunk, I nearly vomited while giving you a blowjob, but you were still able to come in my mouth, and when I left in the morning, I knew that you'd call me.

It was on the fourth date that I brought you flowers - I thought I was so cool for shifting the gender paradigm. You spent an hour looking for a vase; by the time you found one, the petals had wilted slightly, and I had peed four times.

 

 I like peeing; I like the feeling of letting go. So why is it so hard to release you, crystal by crystal, before your yellow rots in my mouth like a bunch of dandelions? I used to pick them during summer afternoons, and weave them into my hair, a walking stereotype waiting for the dramatic music, accompanied by deep-voiced male narration: The young lady tries not to cry as she reads Susan Sontag's ode to urination, and imagines airplanes dancing in the wind like disfigured ballerinas.

Shmuel 1/Rilke (trans S. Mitchell)/Cher

 He came to me through the shadows;
 at night we played chess beneath white sheets,
 flashlight between skinned knees -
 like the child that grows,

our love learned to swallow tears,
our lips learned to lie,
our mouths whispered good-bye:

Now, who will play with my fears?

Tragicomic Cups of Coffee

Maggie had lost the ability to focus. She clicked on headlines in the NY Times and NY Magazine, glancing at the top paragraph of each article before closing the tab on her browser. In between these attempts to read the news, she would go out for coffee with friends and blame all her problems on Facebook.

    The cafe nearest to her was one of those artsy places: Jazz played constantly in the background, and it sold salads with names like "Jerusalem Syndrome" and "Billy Holiday Delight". When Maggie was younger, she once dreamed that she was the Messiah, but then her teacher told her he had to be a king, and she was too young to dream about sex-change operations - speaking of which, there was some show about trannies that was the latest hit on Israeli TV, but being too lazy to read the article, Maggie didn't know exactly why the damn thing was so popular. The headline was enough, along with the picture of a drag-queen, wearing a silver necklace she would - what a silly phrase, "die for". Who on earth would die for a necklace, unless they were already suicidal? Well, give up a coffee for, perhaps.

    Maggie had a date that night, with some British dude she had met at a party. He had red hair, and she liked the way he smiled -but most of all, she liked his ability to completely skewer someone with his words, while laughing. There must be a more eloquent way to express that, but it's hard to be eloquent when you spend most of your time stalking photographs of other people's babies.

    When he showed up at her door with flowers, she was surprised - no one had ever bought her flowers before. She usually dated progressive types, who made you split the bill on the first date. She was beginning to suspect their feminism was merely stinginess in disguise. After she put the flowers in water, and spent fifteen minutes searching for a vase, they went to the local ice-cream shop. He ordered mint. She ordered chocolate.

    Afterwards, she didn't remember much of their conversation. She didn't even remember her asking him to come inside, but soon they were a mess of chest and lips and thighs, and her dress lay on the floorm her bra strewn over a chair. His boxers had landed on her laptop.

    Afterwards, they fell asleep in each other's arms, and when she woke up, she found a thank-you-note on her pillow. He'd forgotten his glasses on her desk. The entire day, she waited for his phone-call. She kept the note and the glasses in her top drawer.

    But no phone-call had come by the time she went to sleep (2 am) after several stressful cups of coffee. The jazz trumpets seemed to echo the beating of her heart, syncopated and out of sorts, and she wished that her own body could sound as beautiful as the music of an era where people didn't waste their time looking up online pictures of cats.

    The next morning, she took out the note and re-read it. She held the glasses to her breasts, and imagined his lips on her nipples. Again, he did not call. On the third day, she decided she might as well be productive and write some emo poetry, but the words would not come.

    It took a month for her to throw out the glasses. The note remained buried in the miscellaneous file that she kept in her closet. Soon, she found herself another first date - this time at the local cafe. Her partner was very impressed that she knew all the waiters, and she felt herself smiling halfway through her first sip of caffeine - but she did not invite him in at the end of the evening, and he went home feeling anxious.

    He spent the night weighing the pleasure of her laughter against the constriction in his chest when he felt pain - he had recently been spurned by another, and why risk a second chance at heart-break?

    When the phone-call she expected did not come, she was surprised to find she had learned not to cry. The next time she went out, she practiced a frown to take between sips, lest the man in question think that she likes him, lest he break her heart - and the good man, taking note of her frown, decided she wasn't interested, and went home to bury his bitterness in a cup of coffee.

Breakup Prose

I could feel her chest heaving against my hand.
"Don't", she said, and I looked away so I wouldn't have to see her cry.
But I could still hear her sobs over the music; I wanted to turn up the volume, but I knew it would be rude.
"It was good", I said, "it just -"
"Wasn't good enough."
"Don't say that -"

But I knew she was right. I knew it the way I knew that I didn't like papayas, or purple negligees.

"Fuck."
"Was I bad in bed?"

I laughed. Wrong reaction. The split second before the "no" hit my lips, gave her a fear I hadn't meant to instill.

"Fuck", I said again.

She laughed. "I'm the one who should get to say that."

I didn't offer to walk her out, merely listened to the sound of her footsteps harmonizing with the drumbeats - after I heard her close the door, I turned the volume up a little higher, and lay down on my newly purchased sheets.

Blossoming (An Ode to Cliches)

You took me softly in the night:

I was a flower, and you were the stamen, emerging from deep inside me. Our kisses ripened like the papaya I bought you for breakfast.

I ate the leftovers for lunch, as you sat on a fancy couch in another country, sipping your mother's tea. You only remembered to miss me in between spoonfuls of sugar - a slave-trade commodity.

It would be easier to close myself up, like a rose in nighttime, or to let you get pricked by my thorns. Instead, I bend back my petals, and cry beneath the stalks of your feet.

ירמיהו 52 ויאיר דלל "דרך הבשמים"

ובתוכה, ובתוכך - עיר של ורדים
ובתוכי, מרירות החוחים
בלכתך אחרי במדבר, בארץ לא זרוע
נטעתי את אהבתנו - למה הרסתה את העצים
בתרם נתנם פרי בתן?

פן ירדפנו, רדפנו - ועבדנו את דודיך, הטובים מיין
מתי תשמיענו את קולך, מתי תראה לנו את פניך
ותלתף אותנו כמו המטעתף בטלית, כן נטעתף האהבתך

מתי תנשקנו ממעון קולך?

Jeremiah 51/In prepapartion for 17 of Tammuz

Words are supposed to fall from your tongue like water
in the time of a drought, and would it be enough if I covered you in my kisses,
my lips licking the skin beneath your elbow, cliches forgotten between our thighs?

I have no more poetry to offer, only the crevices of my body,
and a bit of leftover eye-makeup.

Afterwards, I'll feed you cheese, and pretend to sip your coffee,
as we both ponder the inability of this closeness to stitch together
the holes in forgotten places:

They lie beyond language, beyond words, beyond tongues and kisses,
unreachable, like the Divine Presence that left the Temple,
that kissed the Babylonians with swords.

Jeremiah kissed the scroll of revenge before sending it off,
to be sunk by a rock in the river, but Song of Songs tells us
that love cannot be quenched by water, or soothed by fire.

I have stopped praying not to be consumed - instead,
I pray to feel the power of each flame, the bitterness of these ashes
 that line the ravaged temple of your bed - a floating boat in need of new sheets.

What will she look like, the one you trade me in for?

I already picture you kissing her by the door, in a way you do not kiss me.
 I already picture our nights apart - but this month is all about separation,
between God and nation, the two lovers who could not love -
God, that sounds like the title of some corny movie,
but Oscar Wilde always said that life immitates art.

Maybe he was right, this man for whom words fell like a flood,
and he learned how to let them consume him.