Sima Rabinowitz | There | Poets Resist | Glass: A Journal of Poetry

Sima Rabinowitz is the author of The Jewish Fake Book (Elixir Press, 2004) and Murmuration (New Michigan Press, 2006). Recent work has appeared in Writer’s Resist, the CCD Poetry Project, Independent Variable, and Slag Glass City. She lives in the Bronx, New York.

Also by Sima Rabinowitz: The Jewish Fake Book How Time Was

Poets Resist
Edited by Logan February
July 8, 2019

Sima Rabinowitz

There

I. There is So little left to believe in Geography new weapon of choice The children ate terror for breakfast, lunch And dinner slept or did not Heads pressed against concrete pillows of grief Cried tin foil tears and clutched The grimy hands of sudden siblings who could not replace Their own displaced relatives and dreams Of life before the river and After the river where they did not say What could not be said because it was unsayable. II. There Was A story we told ourselves to keep From turning back toward what we knew Would be no story we could tell Because we would not live to tell it When you were born hija we created a country Just for you north north, north It was as if you were a compass We saw the frontera in your eyes III. There Will Be So many names etched in the dust The earth will look like one huge scar What criminal arithmetic can account For the lost border between breath And no breath between the outstretched Arm and the closed fist Between the rivers we imagined And the currents where we drowned