Otter Cove

By YEHUDIT BEN-ZVI HELLER

 

I took three stones from there:
one from the water
one from the sun
and a small one
to grow.

Co-translated by the poet and Stephen Clingman

 

Yehudit Ben-Zvi Heller is the author of Ha’isha Beme’il Sagol (The Woman in the Purple Coat), Kan Gam Bakayitz Hageshem Yored (Here, Even in the Summer It Rains), and Mehalekhet al Khut shel Mayim (Pacing on a Thread of Water).

Stephen Clingman is Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts. His most recent book is The Grammar of Identity: Transnational Fiction and the Nature of the Boundary.

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Otter Cove

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The Ground That Walks

ALAA ALQAISI
We stepped out with our eyes uncovered. / Gaza kept looking through them— / green tanks asleep on roofs, a stubborn gull, / water heavy with scales at dawn. // Nothing in us chose the hinges to slacken. / The latch turned without our hands. / Papers practiced the border’s breath.