Caesura Vol. VI: Growth

Published June 2023 Tel Aviv University

The Department of English and American Studies

Edited by Ziv Gershon, Maiss

Bishara,

Yael Bright

Cover art “Divine Timing” by Yael Bright (oil paint on canvas)

www.caesuratau.sites.tau.ac.il

Briana Caldwell

It’s Not You It’s Me

Where are you going?

This journey is not an easy one.

It’s messy, dirty, and lonely.

So, where are you going?

I must confess the days when darkness ensues both mind and body are enticing.

Slipping back into the old, never embracing the new.

Okay, but where are you going?

As the days go on, this shell a body begins to feel more and more like a casket.

Dead woman walking.

Excuse me, where are you going?

I need to speak with you with my heart on my sleeve.

I need you to listen.

Where are you going?

See, the reality is…. is that I can’t continue with you.

You, my empty wasteland

You, my shadow

You,

my reflection

You burden me.

And I’m just now realizing that the me I am becoming, is waiting for me. She is waiting for me.

Listen, it’s not you, it’s me.

I have nothing but gratitude for you, please remember that. You’re leaving me?

Noa Cohen Blessed Be This Body after Levi Cain

All five feet and one inch of it. Just enough to be blessed. Hair unplucked, currents of cellulite trickling down hips. Blessed. These toes, blistered from so many miles of walking in the wrong shoes. Blessed. These curls spiraling down my shoulders, frizzing in the rain. Blessed. This skin collecting color in the sun, clearing in all that is bright. This back, weeks of aching from sleeping wrong or the weight of carrying what is too heavy. Blessed. In elementary school, I would daydream my thighs gone. Now, I let the lucky ones

pray for them. Blessed. This stomach, not flat enough. Now, I feed it anyway, keeping it full. Blessed. The stone glittering from my belly button. These breasts

passed down by my mother and her mother and hers, heavy and too big for me, just right. I squeeze them when I can’t breathe. Blessed. My lungs for breathing anyway when air seems distant.

Yuval Loulay There You Are Now

There you are now. It happens fast when you are in the spring. Let’s cooperate, let’s recuperate, recalibrate, rethank. You were behind the camera where the most release of it all shot me off to God knows where. How funny they are, the answers - there for us to feel, not see. Because we do know what’s coming. This is only the beginning, and we don’t even know it as we sit here, a group of drowsy ones trying to push the curtain back. Our futures are intertwined where the grassy hills invite us to sit and take up space. There are books of poetry, recordings, wooden steps; a split computer screen - half-pulp fiction half-book; yeah, yeah; Robert Creeley; Virginia Woolf (Virginia). Our voices trace time, making us wonder later on, why we were so worried. We need to laugh, always, and to feel sentences ripple in our minds. How did she do it? The chapter is enclosed in parentheses. I had to put the book down. I had to call you.

Danielle Madmon I See you

changing

Little by little, like Seawater

Different angles of the you As the Ship replaces parts

Is it old or is it new?

I will hold onto forever –drowned, drunken fool in blue Castaway the memory of the home we made for two.

Vivi Rubanenko excerpt from Strange Bird

There’s something to say about the man in the pigeonhole, the biker, lip chatter

The bus is a lonely place

Music is not how I remember it to be, The conductor cuts us off Somewhere, Several seats away There is an undeliberate whispering

It could’ve been “the inky city is polluted with people”

But there’s nothing to say about lipstick urges and the road to kill If you ever swallow a tooth Wash it down with a glass of milk And let your mother read you a bedtime story Or you could cough it up and flush it down the toilet like your dead goldfish you forgot to feed

If you water it maybe a tooth plant will sprout inside your tummy

Or maybe you’ll accidentally waterboard yourself

That’s the funny thing about “living”

No matter what you choose to do

With your ingested fang

Your spit down molar

Your pointy member

Know that you are on your own and no one is coming

On a Random Tuesday

Tobias Siegal My Bonsai

Trimming the apex Of my Bonsai Was once the height Of my day.

Today, my Bonsai Is all but dead; With it, a part of me has shriveled, too.

My Bonsai would outShadow my dreams. Now, it's a paperweight For my bills.

Its corpse lays bare

The rot - my lack Of care - standing tall As a clay-supported ashTray.

Yuval Loulay We Live

in a big web of people spun by cute, half-mystical spiders all of the center gives time to enjoy the cardamom & vetiver candle, so, sweep your mind into a swaying rhythm of eternity and the sea, speak your mind free for the love of words and God, and the spiders will sing: it is enough, always enough to be

Noa Cohen Change in Season

The rain stopped a few nights ago but I check the weather every morning. Don’t want to get stuck again in dirty rainwater up to my shins, or in thoughts of what could have been with another guy I barely knew. Sweet strawberries sit in my fridge – I must finish them quickly, before they rot. There is always a timeline, occasionally an ending. A period after the last word. The sun has been out most days lately and I don’t think I want him back anymore. Today came with a cold wind

but the sun stuck around anyway. Warmth is on its way, ready to paint everything on this Earth gold and sweet as mangoes. Ready to dry the damp ankles of my jeans.

Tamar Ford Springtime

Don’t believe me? think about how we’ve been intertwined from the very beginning. you look carefully, and you’ll see how the spaces caress the perfect curves and peaks between words. Go on – seduce me. An accidental moment where you looked at me, for real… for the first time. I feel your stare but won’t look back. Not yet. But. I want to. So while you look and while I feel my cheeks get a rising blush. I don’t know why – I get shy. I bite my lip to stop myself from turning. If I do, I won’t be able to help myself. But. Surely. Your gaze getting hotter, hotter… at last, catch an eye. Breathing on hold. Hold steady. Sparkling tingle, excited. What new beginning is this? Eyes bright. Curious. You come over. I can’t stop smiling. Neither can you. There’s a glow, growing as we grow and share and grow… and it connects and protects us. I smile, knowing, and invite. Hold me… softly… and then we are Here.

A single petal… a murmuring descent. you cannot believe your eyes. and ask me to join your mind . . . . …

Danielle Madmon – (Digital art)

Love Me Not & Love Me as I Am

Rachel Spiro

Creatio Ex Nihilo

This is me forcing the words to emerge from the abyss of silence. It is truly a creatio ex nihilo, for this flesh is a nothingness that has no business conjuring up such infinitesimally subtle things as these fossilized intimations. There is no waywardness; only is, is not, and delusion. Then how to account for the deliberations of a misguidedly moral soul? How to account for the penetration of fiction into fact or fact into fiction, for a moment, before withdrawing back into necessarily appropriate positions? How to account for regret, repentance? If we are situated exclusively within a forward-forging vehicle, then how could one possibly explain the circuitous orbiting that inevitably arises, or the constant backward glances that chain one to was?

No easy or simple answer comes to the fore. The human animal seeks to forget what does not predominately help it to persist. But still a force from the depths of being, like tectonic plates underneath the ocean floor, inconspicuously sends forth waves that crash violently upon the shores of

consciousness. Though one’s life or thoughts may seem banal and ill-prompted, still, they represent the outermost manifestations of legitimate, profound shifts in nature. Everything concomitantly influences everything else, and thus the creative instinct in man is the most powerful tool he possesses and that which unassumingly has the most wide-reaching influence on his world and that of those he comes into contact with.

This writing is the attempt to awaken my own consciousness and with that newfound alertness awaken others’ consciousnesses as well. So, it is like an alarm clock in order to usher in an abrupt end to spiritual sleep, to nervous deadness. Actually, it is less like the alarm clock itself and more like the search for the best tune with which to equip said alarm clock. Something not so abrasive as to set the person off hating wakefulness altogether and not so pleasing as to lull one into a mindless appreciation, but rather a stimulating call to mental arms, if you’ll excuse the unsavory, borderline oxymoronic phrase. Now is the time for action; this life, you. There is no room for stalling,

halting, or dragging feet when every meaningful endeavor requires so much, and we endowed with so little.

Noa Mintz

How to Speak to an Old Friend

“Begin general, become specific.” A worn teacher once said Now the dial beeps …/…/…………/

And I wonder why no one has ever taught me how to speak to an old friend

One separated by seas, By I didn’t see this, woah

Sorry sorry sorry, does it work to call now?

A silent prayer for a call busy signal

Because

I should not tell her about a new soup recipe when she doesn’t even know I own a pot

The elasticity of time is all of the sudden

Feeling rigid, coiled around my finger And the passing of minutes is days

Years

Comfort Transparency Deliverance

Angst sets in, a pillow pushed against my stomach recollecting in high-speed a life once lived

Opting to arrive at an anecdote, a thought even That has maintained relevance

I no longer feel so relevant

Laughing at a mother’s bike-basket that holds many children and has taxi painted on it Things purchased, things seen Characters and selves that have faded in and out in the time it takes for a call-waiting line to answer

A whisper enters stage right, an opening line “I can’t talk louder, I’m in the library”

One voice in a world of words

I am curious if the books she’s reading are more interesting than what I will say

In the loose ties of a dis-connecting phone line

One touch of a dog’s fur

Quick and easy. A secret

while the walker’s back is turned pushing at the atm

Connection circulates us

I started putting coconut oil in my hair

It’s softer now

Uhmhmm, yeah

Cool.

At once it was time that made gaps

Now it’s space and the difference between zones and globes and

A marking on the map shows --you are here--

is not such a fallacy because where you are is probably where you ended up

I start to wish that maybe something dramatic happened to Make known that distance is a drama

And life is tales

Tempting to let my name go down as a missed call

And now it’s jarring that if I changed my name

It wouldn’t change me, she wouldn’t know

I’ll just say I did to see what happens the doctor in the background calls out ייייייליל הענ

Do you hear that?

Memories are a buoy

Through which we can continue to float Someone once-had

Isn’t caring enough to undergo a breakage

A call, like an essay for points to be proven

And a sloppy grade

A rushed comment on the top Great sentence structure, kid

Sounds like life is going good

Anna

Zarchi

Your Arm in Mine

I never see it until I look behind me

Daisies trampled on the ground hurts when you’re the one that grew them

I think there might be something wrong with me

But I think I did the right thing

When did the sharp pain fade to a numbing throb to a friendly hug and a I can’t wait to see you again?

Intense dislike, followed by tolerance

Grew into adoration, fascination

I always hugged you from behind Your shoulders perfectly hunched

A battle of wills, the most stubborn of minds

You once wrote to me in a letter that I am the most willing to do anything for those I love but somehow I also need everything to go my way, and you couldn’t reconcile that I couldn’t reconcile you.

You were 19, I turned 19 that day

A split, a heart wrenching gap between those who were inseparable

Or maybe we were separable

Of course we were, we were barely glued together Only years of limited company could do that The hatred didn’t come back, but the pain did Crying in the back seat of a car

With music I hated blasting from the front And music I loved bleeding inside of me

No one saw

And neither did you, though you weren’t there There was no witness to my tears

I hardened my will and put up a wall

A line

Did I talk to you at all that one September day everyone came to my house?

I don’t think so, not a word

I went on.

And when everyone came to my house again, perhaps the last time all seven of us would ever be present in the same room again for the next few years, we spoke And we sang

How many years? You asked, and I wagered 5. 27, and maybe we’ll all be in a room again.

You take your tea hot, and I take mine with a quarter of room temperature water

Three years until I realized you knew Not that you remembered

Just that you knew.

Your warmth next to me in that hall, coming back to finish what we started.

Your arm in mine, clutching on for dear life as we walk out.

I look back

Our last look.

I’m not coming back, I say, and together we turn around and walk away again, forward, arms still linked. I look back, and I cannot remember when the wound healed and the cracks mended and why I am holding your arm and your head is on my shoulder.

The daisies were still trampled, but new ones were grown. I looked back and decided to give peace a chance.

Yuval Loulay

Tender Buttons

(Inspired by Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons)

A BLUE SONG.

A song tuned down to blue in November. Listen closely. The quiet streets deceive. Tonight - listen closely. Simple is the beauty of not knowing the beauty that is to come.

AN OCEAN.

Once, what was shared is split. It divides, reminds. In the hope that was there - there was one side. Let it be the same side. Silence (one and the same) as an ocean fading in the night. Remain still at the core. In the waves be.

DARK CHOCOLATE.

Almost sweet is not sweet. With the storm out there, the windows are essential. Endless work calls inside. Then thunder, lightning, and so on. Could the work calls be less boring and more like the storm. Finally, five minutes to look

at the storm. More in less can be found, with time and a willingness to learn.

Lina Odeh

Birthday Poem

One’s five in mine; she created a Flower, at a thin honey-coated beehive. The other passed a dated Snorkel, and in all that sweetness he told it to “dive.”

Four cold breezes and a Silence

later, the petals felt Thirst and drive to Plunge in the deep house of Sharks, taste the saltiness, Smile, and Survive. Many wet winters passed, now spring have Seem to arrive.

They paddle back up for soil and light where a “delicate” is meant to Thrive.

“Bury the stings and the vacuum bubbles with(in) the roots, but keep the Teeth alive. And regarding that little dusty chalkboard tag of yours, just scribble ‘twenty-five’.”

Yuval Loulay Collage

(To scratch the paper is to materialize. When you stacked the teacups, you never imagined they would take flight –forming a new mode of existence – and that you would be initiating them into this dream of a life. Where the pinks swirl for hearts of orange suns and the teaspoon of black canvas fabric stirs the static sheet. They are waiting for you, and each time you arrive they guide you across the colors of thought that paint. The house was there before you found the idea in your hand. And isn’t it funny that when you forget to look for answers, they surface second by second. Where you want to go - the house with the orange roof for a chimney – imagined in orange sway. The bottom of the candle holder will hide behind the bowl if you let it, and what really matters here is the candle. Light it where paper isn’t flammable. Start a fire, a great fire in your mind, and let it unfurl the warm orange-yellow for the sun to set the record straight. It’s all light in you. Let’s go to the movies

tomorrow night. (The summer for the sake of yes-living)

Plant it, and you’ll see, it grows where it wants)