Caesura Volume 7

CAESURA Volume VII: Presence

Tel Aviv University English Department Literary Magazine 2024

Caesura Vol. 7: Presence Published July 2024 Tel Aviv University The Department of English and American Studies Edited by Ziv Gershon, Maiss Bishara, Avishag Eliav, Lina Odeh, Yasmeen Awwad Cover Art By Ubiquitous Presence: Selected Works by Barbara Bullock September 15 – October 30, 2022 Curated by Andrea Packard www.caesuratau.sites.tau.ac.il caesuratau@gmail.com IG @caesuratau

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS We are honored to present this year’s issue of Caesura: Vol. VII “Presence.” Traditionally, the annual theme of the magazine attempts to reflect a part of the human journey, as it unfolds among us persistently.

This volume tries to find a moment of peace, a chance to hear a new voice, amidst a threatening and overwhelming chaos unfolding all around. These literary works illuminate different manifestations of presence: through quiet resilience, the echo of a distant memory, the simple act of bearing witness to one another, and more.

Beyond enjoyment of these poems, we hope readers will achieve new perspectives on their own presence as well as glean a deeper understanding of the essence of the word. The works in Caesura VII explore these topics, placing Presence in a shifting frame of reference. Please enjoy these thought provoking and insightful pieces.

Warmly, The Editors.

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Table of Contents Late “Milk and Honey” A Phantom’s Prom I Call Her Insomnia Rut At This Very Moment Of Two Rivers Almost Rain in a Small Bakery Bear Witness all-boy all-girl What Does It Mean to Be Held?

Wedding Photos I never complain One of My Fondest Memories with My Brother I Watched Him Overflow The Quite Feeling of Normalcy Winter 2024, Tel Aviv I am That I am Nature's Eminent Company

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3 4 9 11 12 14 15 17 19 20 22 23 27 28 29 33 34 36 38 41

Aviva Betzer

Late I wake up at dawn and sense my scars. They display the revolving doors of past and present. I cling to routine and when the day breaks down I recollect thoughts and body sensations of far away, when I was hibernating in the wood married to a tree. You are haunting me, I see bright colors in the stairwell, the moon is full. I have fallen out of the picture.

3

Sari Mualem

“Milk and Honey” I stand here long and tall before your existence.

Your sand, your olive, your Red Sea. holy to the extinct Quetzalcoatlus, to the quadrupedal Gazelle and to You, devoted preacher.

I stand here a sojourn to the tired and the tiresome on this mass crust of water Today you have eviscerated my spirit young preacher.

I witnessed the slaughter of my people — your people over white powder.

Young preacher I witnessed my own

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decapitation. sharp lines and quick cuts of fences.

Severing my bread from my wine.

I bore my children’s prayers as the chimes of birds raced across my sky.

It started raining, young preacher.

And I heard my children’s prayers no more.

Do not honor for a second My presence in your depravity.

Your wrinkled nose of antique strategy and false promises I bury in the dirt from which I grow Sabr. a fruitful waste of words spoken.

Your darkness will not overshadow my light, you Commander.

Your black heart precedes the beauty of your blue iris.

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I serve you no longer.

My body is a Chapel song sung only by the brave and peaceful with a fig for violin thyme for an oud and a goblet drum which bangs to the beating Heart of the Muslim, the Christian the Jew, the Druze, the Bedouin, the Circassian, the Arab, the Turk, the Native, the Foreign the Spaniard, the Merc, the Yemenite, the Syrian, the professor, the preacher, the writer, the speaker, the Polish, the Russian, the Serbian-Ukrainian the mute, the deaf, the blind, the Gay, the agnostic, the Greek the criminal, the frayed, the dominant, the meek, and the ones that imbeciles dare call a Freak

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My melody is heard by you and your ones before you.

Your fathers and mothers grew with my barn animals for their warmth. with my vegetation for their food.

As have you, over-seasoned lot.

Approach me with your open arms and receive my colorless warmth wrinkled from your destruction jagged from your hatred.

I bequeath to you my future— a worn tapestry with my needle between your creased fingertips.

Now do as Teta taught you, in her special way of tatreez.

Weave me a better future where you can sound your barbaric yawp atop my mountains of 7

milk and honey freely, I say, freely.

8

Sol Perkis

A Phantom’s Prom They lay the porcelain on the table, Fine dinnerware, albeit excessive.

The stain of alcohol is cleaned from the carpet.

It is a red as bright as blood, But no one says anything, so neither should I. Dukes and duchesses flock together Wearing the finest of silks Their noses tilted ever slightly towards the skyline.

And something twists in my heart When no one says anything nice About my new gown.

Under the chandeliers Everyone has saved an empty seat for someone they love, But there’s no room for me I see my words slip off their shoulders, Flying through the doorway 9

To greet the chirping crickets.

I watch them dance on my blood, Unaware, because it was scrubbed away I hear all their stories, all their fears, But they never hear me calling.

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Khaled Khateb

I Call Her Insomnia She keeps me awake at night With the comfort of her absence, Hollowed names floating Where your skull rests, And no caressing body fills the lust Of the pain that I mustered My gift My own sweet deprivation, My fleeting hance for paradise My loss of any sensation, No riddle in place You know of whom I speak But I, I call her Insomnia The one who keeps me weak.

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Inbar Arad

Rut Every now and then, researchers and photographers of nature and biology may find a male deer in an unfortunate predicament. Come autumn, every male will need to find his female to mate with, his true match. And every autumn, some males will have to face fierce battles for the affections of their chosen one. They headbutt each other with all their might, hoping to wound the other deeply enough so that they may be left alone to their designs.

Sometimes, they tangle. Their long, twisting antlers meet in the most inopportune manner, and they find themselves twisted in the embrace of one another, stuck.

This sort of entanglement might last a long while, until one deer has lost its life to the mismatched union. Then, the victor remains with a rotting reminder of their strength.

Stuck in a rut, the intertwined antlers hold together life and death, victor and vanquished. The sweet scent in the air could be confused as the smell of victory, except it is cloying and putrid and unmistakable: the smell of rotting 12

flesh. The living male carries on, trotting along with its fallen enemy caught in his antlers, dangling precariously.

Days, weeks pass and almost every trace of his once rival has sloughed off, all but the antlers tangled in his own, and the rotting head hanging off them. The mating season had come and gone, and every female our winning male had approached in hopes of mating had run off in terror at the sight of his unwanted addition. The spoils of the battle hang off his head, reminding him the cost of his fighting and robbing him of the reward he had fought for.

The joy of winning lost as he tries not to meet the dead eyes staring endlessly into his.

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Yoav Cohen

At This Very Moment At This Very Moment I wish I could Paint.

Walking through the valley a scene is cast before me.

One tree brilliantly brown and green and under its branches A boy.

A Boy covered in an orange jumper sleeping so peacefully; This is a scene I wish to recreate\never forget.

Light blue mixes with green and orange and brown.

The image is clear to me but in this painting the colours Will bleed.

This Painting will live on forever.

At this very moment I wish I could.

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Lora Kadmany

Of Two Rivers Here, fallen like a leaf, hovering over the unknown seeds A witness leaf with a tear, above two rivers of bleak Suddenly flown in this strange myth of a land ‘Tis the land that is now carrying blood and tears Confused leaf, swinging in its mythical breeze I see, I hear, “‘Tis of holy and special seeds” they speak I’m here, but I can not feel what they feel Alone like a leaf, dancing in its swirling winds of grief “‘Tis of holy and special seeds” they say, estranged to that I be A fiery vivid conflict flowing between two rivers everly Till both rivers froze, of cold hearts they breed Pointing their nasty spears one against the other While innocent get bury frozen, frightened in the deep — of Both rivers, yet, this they do not see O' tragedy, me can no more endure ‘Tis a game of the careless, there me can not be O' tragedy, me can no more see 15

Humans like leaves falling around me, all cause of Beliefs of those unknown, long gone seeds But I’m a small helpless leaf, still my heart will keep the bleed In the game of two rivers I know a leaf will always be blown far away to leave And maybe like others, burn’d and buried in the cold deep But I’m here, I’m here, ‘till it gets warm, and the rivers molten By the hearts’ heat of the lost and abandoned, I’ll be here But how long will I be able to be the helpless leaf?

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Nora Jabaly

Almost I wish it got easier.

Watching you live your life, knowing I’m forever on the sidelines.

So, I float in the multiverse, Hoping to find one where you might love me.

But still, in every universe I behold the sunsets you love, alone.

With every falling star, I hoped you’d hear my pleading voice, but in your silence, I realize that, I can’t love you into loving me.

So, The search goes on, And maybe, 17

be some miracle, in a different universe, We won’t be an almost.

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Lina Oziery

Rain in a Small Bakery It rained today, And I was happy to sway, To the tune as it played.

To forget the soufflé, And say away with the day!

Tip

tap

tip

tap

How I love it when the ground is flat.

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Yoav Cohen

Bear Witness I break the tip of the pencil, gunshots shatter, the world Is changed.

A boy was shot underneath the old trees loving branches He gets away, and I watch life slowly leave him I watch my mum Doing her best to keep the doors of life open She was first to the scene I don’t feel anything for him But I am amazed by my Mum He is done but Mum won’t stop The ambulance arrives and takes over I hug her covered in blood The Old tree burns with rage I feel nothing for the boy I run and feel nothing for the boy He was and is now no more I feel nothing for the boy Even when I learn that I knew him 20

He threw an egg at me He stole my scooter He took a basketball of mine and stabbed it He was a bully I love you.

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Aviva Betzer

all-boy all-girl I haven’t decided yet. Shaved head and lumpy sweatpants, I still wish I could kiss a boy.

The girl on the radio talks about sex and I panic. When I go shopping for clothes I stand in the middle of the store and cannot choose. Men’s? Women’s?

That was a long time ago.

Today I find shoes on street corners.

I am careful like that because it’s all-boy talking now. And when my girly girl talks her voice is muffled by the beating of my own heart speaking –

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Noa Cohen

What Does It Mean to Be Held?

After Marina Tsvetaeva and Pat Schneider To be wrapped in another’s limbs. Contained by another body. Nowhere to go but love. Breathing through tears. Breathing through pleasure. What does it mean to be held? Safe as inside four walls. Above, a roof.

Below, a floor that is always being swept, never clean.

What does it mean to be held?

To be the tea that fills the chipped mug’s blank space. To be kept from spilling over, confined.

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To make the mug warm in cold hands.

What does it mean to be held? Words on a page. Flames sputter, words stick around. Words move water. Carve a path to a new home. The bottom of the lake holds them. Wet clay in a sculptor’s stained hands.

What does it mean to be held?

To be a prisoner. Shackled, stripped down to nothing but skin. Ruled by such strict adherence to grammatical norms. (How) does a sentence end? What does it mean to be held? Longing for poetry, for breaking free from syntax. What does it mean to be held?

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A name in a lover’s mouth. The sound of it held there just a moment longer. This moment the same forever as a flame. Later, it will be swallowed, sent into darkness with a sip of water.

Ahh, the release of air. The relief of quenched thirst.

Later the name will be ash stains on denim, removed too easily. What does it mean to hold?

Later, memory.

But for now, later is a myth. What does it mean to be held? Like horses: Tamed. Wildness turned palatable. Thundering hooves turned to whispers, a breeze moving through barely overgrown grass.

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It will be mowed tomorrow.

A deep breath in, lungs close to overflowing. All exits sealed, air on lockdown. Cheeks puffy to make room for excess, a balloon almost popping. Waiting for loss of consciousness, for blue lips. Waiting to let go of such dusty air, only to breathe in again.

After the holding, there will be another breath. In each breath there is another answer waiting to be set free. Waiting to be sucked back into curious lungs.

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Lina Oziery

Wedding Photos are so awkward and free, they mention a reality where you wish you could be.

The whole actuality of it, The subtlety, You mourn it, so heaven-bounded, and openly.

Like a wild-hunt-inspired, lovely spree.

Watched our branches break but, I'm still here, I hear their constant chanting: "Love is key!"

And instead of steering clear of it, forever-ly, I do not condone to ever flee, Rather to try that hard to face it, Courageously.

Maybe find my own personal, molded tree.

When did I start thinking, so atrociously?

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Yoav Cohen

I never complain I never complain about my commute Okay maybe I do But I actually like my commute Even when the bus is late And stuck in traffic And when I need to change The commute lets me think relax, shut down In a way My commute sucks Especially if I drive But when riding the bus and waiting To change I find my presence

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Melanie Stern

One of My Fondest Memories with My Brother One of my fondest memories with my brother is from the morning after our mother died. It was 6 am, and we had gone to meet Hevre Kadisha, the Jewish Burial Society, to register our mother and arrange the funeral.

We wanted to be there early because it was a Friday, which is a half-day in Israel, and everything closed early for Shabbos. Mum had passed at eleven-thirty the night before, we were on virtually zero sleep, in a daze, wearily treading into our new lives without her. I had cried for at least four days straight, holding Mum’s hand and sleeping beside her in her bed. My brother was wrung dry, having spent those days trying to keep things under control, changing Mum’s IV bag, moving her slumbering body, sitting solemnly watching his sister grieve like a wounded animal and his beloved mother die. After the ambulance came to take her, way past midnight, I took a Xanax and collapsed onto an air mattress, not wanting to sleep in my 29

mother’s bed without her. I awoke at dawn on the floor, the mattress having decompressed into nothing more than a plastic bag during the night. My brother who had slept folded on the couch was up too, ready to get going. Hevre Kadisha, however, was closed. It was at least an hour until they opened, and when we returned there was already a long line of grieving families waiting their turn. My brother and I sat calmly as the others hummed and hawed at the disgrace and disorder of the burial society. Only one clerk was taking the register, a young, black-hatted ultra-Orthodox Jew who seemed to have learned to type on a keyboard fairly recently. Meanwhile, another clerk, a tubbier, black-hatted ultra-Orthodox Jew, stood with us in the waiting room making snide remarks. It was as if he had forgotten we had all just lost a close relative. When it was our turn, the clerk was creepily enthusiastic about our family’s ultra-religious Hebrew names. “Straight outta’ Brooklyn!” He joked with us. He got the names wrong and somehow typed in that we were from Georgia, so he had to re-type it all, at a speed so slow it was remarkable. Then we had to choose a coffin. “You can get a private coffin, for about forty-thousand shekels,” he said, “or a stone in the 30

wall, for free.” I didn’t want Mum to have a stone on the wall. “You can also purchase a double tomb, for 12 thousand shekels,” he said. “We’ll do that,” I said, “then I can be buried there with her when I die.” “Great,” grinned the clerk, “and you can rent it out until then!” When we were finished, we drove straight to the cemetery amidst rising traffic, almost late for our own funeral. The rest is a haze I try to block out, seeing Mum wrapped in the cloth, driven carelessly to her grave by two ultra-Orthodox Jews babbling between them as if it was a normal Friday. I couldn’t bear to look at them lower her into the ground. I turned around and gazed at the sky instead. There wasn’t a cloud in sight.

Earlier, while we waited for Hevre Kadisha to open, we went to get coffee at a chain café nearby. We took our coffee cups and sat outside on the straw chairs, both extremely tired and painfully awake, wearing the same clothes we’d worn the day, perhaps two, before. We discussed what we would say at the funeral. I said I’d say a few words and read the poem I wrote for her. I wanted her to know what I was saying, for her to have heard my words before. I wasn’t ready for things to happen that Mum 31

didn’t know about, and I couldn’t tell her about later. I also couldn’t think at all at that point. My brother said that he had asked Mum what he should say at her funeral. He said that she’d answered: “Tell a dirty joke”. That made me smile. “I have one,” he said. “Go on,” I urged. “I think I’ll tell

them

that

Mum’s

computer

password

was

micropenis23”. I burst out laughing. I laughed and laughed. For ages, I sat spluttering and squinting and choking from laughter, until my stomach hurt. I couldn’t believe I was laughing so hard only a few hours after Mum had died, but I couldn’t stop. My brother laughed too. It was so funny, so perfectly funny. Nothing was the same, and it never would be. But here we were, laughing, together.

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Rozeen Abu Elnaaj

I Watched Him Overflow I can't fill all my sadness into one cup I asked if I could borrow yours because Mine will spill.

You denied it, said I was Corrupt, and to make things worse you stole my first cup.

Emotions exploding Brain matters over-floating a furious, contaminated spring.

"I think I will be missing your skin”, You said I was your everything.

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Hadeel Majdoub

The Quite Feeling of Normalcy There lies at the very Bottom of my old light brown closet, The desire of loss.

Looking for something.

The satisfactory confusion of not Knowing Uncertainty The lust for the…

Thing I keep looking for Under the bed and in between my clothes In the bosom of my heart, Between my books Looking for the…

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Thing The desire to desire And look forSomething.

I think it might be there, Somewhere, Probably not in the closet or under my heartNot in the trash can For I don't remember throwing the thing Away.

Looking for the unthinkable For my last puzzle piece My heart yearns Looks everywhere For the quiet Feeling of Normalcy.

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Noa Cohen

Winter 2024, Tel Aviv In between late January downpours, the city streets hung out to dry like worn sheets.

I walked among the creases, hoping the rain would stay away as long as I held my breath. I would mistake a closed black umbrella for M16, mistake M16 for an unopened umbrella.

I waited for a gun to open above a man’s head, to shoot the rain away.

I waited for an umbrella aimed forward, ready to stop a beating sound so much louder and so much wetter than heavy rain on pavement.

The laws of this universe are rigid 36

as dough in our hands.

I wanted to tell all these men: put down whatever it is you hold in your calloused hands.

Remember you are vulnerable as the street cats whose ears you stroke.

Feel the cold rain soak through your sweater, through your dry and permeable skin. Listen for the sound of hearts you expected to be silent as chiseled stone.

Listen, they are beating in the same language as your own tired heart. They are yearning to beat their way through this long night.

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Tymaa Faour

I am That I am Routinic Misery A blue and rotten sanctuary, Filled with empty cassettes To be filled with memories.

A room For my own, Paper walls in yellow shade The Swing and The Kiss, Mid Tempest.

There's, Reminiscence of an old smell Breath in, Memorial of a new death Breath out.

Ask for a companion A room for two Unholy shrine Where angels meet 38

And breed.

“Getting fruitful and multiply”.

Then, A New animal is discovered, They talk and smoke and eat, They tell lies And repeat lines Of words to cross And then Fall across The divine.

So Build walls Create a maze.

The girls will get lost And call it a phase The boys will grow their hair long And call it a day But the work isn’t done And the day uncounted and lost Collect the ashes of a burnt artist 39

And lick off the rust.

Therefore, I think I am Too damaged to be what they want me to be What I want to be Or Better not to be.

“I am that I am” An absence of words Read that I love you. and Welcome home.

I don't want love but I want you

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Lina Oziery

Nature's Eminent Company I stood in a field of many flowers, It's width and volume too great to calculate, Made a space for all their scented presence, Of different colors, mass and bulk.

As I was quietly observing; their connection and community, and the way they just, relate.

I tried not to single one out, oh so hard and great, But its unavoidable as you take notice of their sharp thorns— it so suddenly makes you hear the buzzing of the bees.

As I was paused in time, looking and hearing them conversing, body language and facial expressions, Wholeheartedly thinking myself invisible and alone.

But then I felt the wind in my hair, Watched her guide my fallen leaves not to fray— Clear as day!

Realizing I was not.

The trees were there as well.

Roots grounded; bodies embedded.

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Our message clear and coherent.

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SPECIAL THANKS TO...

Dr. Nir Evron, Dr. Roi Tartakovsky and the English and American Studies Department at Tel Aviv University for sponsoring this project.

Meital Galili for her constant help, support, and well... her lovely presence!

And of course, we extend our heartfelt gratitude to all who submitted visual and literary works this year. We thank each and every one of you for your contributions.

Reading your works has been both a privilege and a pleasure. Volume VII exists because of you, and we are honored to welcome you to our international community of creatives.

- Caesura Editors