DORIT WEISMAN

DORIT WEISMAN

SESTINA FOR A CASHIER

Hershey’s chocolate 7290000255903

729000287248 and 7290000135700

peach nectar and Chinese pickles

my daughter is wandering what is she doing

cracked olives 7290000046006

this cash register’s broken, you have to enter everything twice.

This week I worked my shifts twice

I want to go home before three

a large roll an empty bottle times six

turkey breast in marinade 7290002400

a feast this woman is making

a quarter of a chicken and Chinese pickles

Sitting here hours like a Chinese worker

bread and more bread that’s twice

what am I doing what am I doing

another 729000035707 and more 729000035703

72964415 it all looks to me like zero

I’ll go back home at six

That man acts like a child of six

everyone’s taking the Chinese pickles

7290002706724, 7290002660200

Today I’ve seen this woman twice

and this time makes three

and for my husband what am I doing

Hot chocolate and a six pack of beer

with the new wrinkle what am I doing

I’m tired and I see double and triple

Chinese pickles Chinese pickles Chinese pickles

someone else is taking it twice

and inside my head is black and empty

7290002989943, 9290003067540

7290002415107 what is hot pepper doing

7290000046006 twice

7290000047362 times six

7290000457253 again Chinese pickles

7290002871248, 7290000135703

7290000135703 and two times zero

again these Chinese pickles what am I doing

I want to be a girl of six think twice.

TRANSLATED BY LISA KATZ

[UNTITLED]

I do not want to be

a breast poet.

I want my breasts to be sound and sub rosa,

taken for granted, not written about

and certainly not by me.  My hands shake.

Someone sings about leaves in the wind.

My mother asks how I can do this

and still dance.

Yellow fluid leaves a stain

a nurse says will come out in the wash.

Another one stands behind me, on the left, watching,

she would like to put a hand on my head.

The spotlights dim, darkening

the room.

TRANSLATION: LISA KATZ

From: Where Did You Meet the Cancer?

Publisher: Carmel, Jerusalem, 2006

 

MY MOTHER, 56 YEARS LATER

The years fall off her, as in another poem, tougher,

and there, on the tree-lined boulevard, she walked lightly,

leaning on her stick. Mom, I said to her, I want you

running like a girl, running on the boulevard,

I want to photograph you running on the boulevard,

but she didn’t run, my mother, I photographed her weeping,

the leaves falling around her. Nothing has changed

in 56 years, she said. Sat on a bench on top of a rocky mound,

as she did many years ago, forgetting the inflammation in her gums and the pain in her knees. With a soft, quiet face, listened to the leaves.

2005, Dorit Weisman

TRANSLATION: 2006, RACHEL YAKOBOVITCH

RED GIANT

I was angry with my husband because

in order to recycle and preserve the planet

he added to the wash

a towel, a sheet, socks and underpants.

The television above the treadmill says

life will end in another 50 billion years

when the sun turns into a red giant.

Time flies. I better go back and make up.

TRANSLATION: 2012, LISA KATZ

60 CATS

My aunt Tara already has 60 cats

That was revealed on our last phone call.

When I stayed with them she was feeding

A one eyed, resentful and hostile cat

For another cat she tried her best to get rare

Medications from a doctor friend, in a nearby hospital

And some of her cats were so weak,

That she had to feed them intravenously.

She lived with Lali in a big house

Near a forest, in a suburb of Boston.

60 cats, that’s a lot of milk bowls

Scattered all over the place, not to mention the smell.

The sick ones she kept in the basement.

They had colored tags on their ears

Yellow meant they could roam around the house,

Red meant they could also go outside.

My uncle, Lali, bought an improved computer and a laser printer

And converted his shares into beautiful graphs.

I wanted to write that during breakfast

They were not talking, but that’s not true,

They usually don’t have them together,

Breakfast, lunch or dinner

Twenty seven years ago,

They were my model couple

They were the first married couple

I’ve ever heard say sexy things to one another.

(from the book The days I visited the cuckoo's nest)

DORIT WEISMAN

DORIT WEISMAN Poet, translator and director was born April 1950 in Kfar-Saba (Israel) and lives in Jerusalem.  She is the winner of the International Poetry Prize Alfonso Gatto 2016 (Salerno, Italy), the Yehuda-Amichi Prize for Poetry and the Prime-Minister Prize for Israeli writers, 2003. She published 10 volumes of poetry, one prose book, one translation book (poems of the writer and poet Charles Bukowski) and she is the editor of an Anthology of Israeli Women Social Protest Poetry – "The Naked Queen". Her prose book, Positive Result - dealing with her experience and growing after cancer disease - won the Lottery Programme prize and the Rabinovitz Fund for translating it to English.