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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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