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Picture
Epicenter: Marla in Jerusalem
LynleyShimat Lys

Wires drape like vines from the ceiling.
Shattered tables sit amid a fine rain of plaster.
Chairs at skewed angles
                                    mark trajectories.
I have a front-row seat for the history
of the Jewish people.                               
On the same stretcher
with the body no longer
yours, they take away
sense.
                            The fortress
                of the university
has been imploded, the room
                raised and dropped
by the impact.
I am a part of the struggle                       
for Israel's survival.                                    
The photographs are hieroglyphs –
            I can't decode
                        a cell phone, a bag,
            building supplies,
the contents of the bomb.

                                        If I could piece back
            this broken glass,
                        screws, bolts, and nails,
                                        I could build a house,
            fertilize a garden, and you
would be
            a year younger than me,
not frozen in photo stills.
Paying for my groceries is the same               
as contributing money to my favorite cause.

I wish death
on your killer
in that instant before
            breath brings
                                        pause.
But you wanted peace
and I want that for you,
not more shattered ceilings
not more walls caving in.

I return
            despite the nightmares.
I feel you everywhere on campus
                                         the stone plaza
                            makes concrete
            your absence. I break down
in mid day, under the scalding sun
                                       I weep and leave
            a rock on your memorial, and I cry
when the yearly wreath dries.
There is nowhere else in the world
I would rather be right now.             
Your words leave traces
on the stone, engraved beneath
                           the carved letters
           of your name.

I shy away from eating
            at the tables where I once
                          spent every summer lunch,
            and from chairs now potent with dark meanings.
I pluck at the strands
            and rivulets
                          of a stream of circumstance.
Time seeps into
          the vortex of a chance event.
                                     I age further and further away.

From the universities
           at Bethlehem and Abu Dis
came condolences, remorse
           from the wall painter
                                    who planted the bomb
                            and set off
                            the chain of events.
But the dead
stay dead.

The last thing I said
               to you, I'll see you around Jerusalem.
       
                            I still do.

there is nowhere else in the world I would rather be right now. I have a front-
row seat for the history of the Jewish people. I am a part of the struggle for
Israel's survival. Paying for my groceries is the same as contributing money to
my favorite cause
-- Marla Bennett


LynleyShimat Lys, who is on the poetry track of the Queens College MFA in Creative Writing and Literary Translation, comes from Berkeley, California, and returns to New York after five years in the Middle East studying and working in Jerusalem. Lynley has a B.A. in Comparative Literature (Hebrew, Russian, English) from UC Berkeley and an MA in Middle Eastern Studies (Palestinian Poetry) from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Lynley's current interests include contemporary African-American women poets, intersections between Israeli and Palestinian poems of place, and plays in verse.

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