Issue 11

Summer 2002

Leslie Cohen

Leslie Cohen is a freelance writer living on Kibbutz Ein Hashofet. She recently published her first book, Facets of the Poet, a collection of poems, short stories and biographical sketches. She was born and raised in New York City and received her M.A. in Cultural Anthropology. She then set off for Alaska and taught at Anchorage Community College, a branch of the University of Alaska , for three frozen years. On a trip to Los Angeles to thaw out, she met and married her husband, and they set off to backpack around Europe for a year. That, too, was too cold, so they ended up on a kibbutz. Twenty-two years and three children later, she has published about 100 book reviews, dozens of poems, and short stories for adults and children.

geometry lesson

the shortest distance
between two points
is a straight line
but only on a flat surface

in the three-dimensional world
plane routes arch in curved lines
Tokyo flies to Anchorage over the Pole

the distance between you and me
can’t be traveled in a straight line
otherwise I would speed directly to you

in our solid geometry
bilaterally symmetrical shapes
obstruct the way
the straight line is a forbidden route

my desire is an arrow
whistling into infinity
you instruct me to collapse its trajectory
into a dot – or less

I survive your geometry lesson
| by tracing the lines of my fantasy
through imaginary time

 

To Dream in Hebrew

I never dreamed I'd learn to dream in Hebrew
A tongue so strange its “hello" means "goodbye!"
Yet my middle-of-the-nighttime conversations
Resound with bakasha, toda, and dai.

I never dreamed I'd learn to dream in Hebrew
A tongue so turned around it says "night-good!"
Yet yofi squirts from out of my unconscious
As El Al touches safely down at Lod.

I never dreamed I'd learn to dream in Hebrew
A gendered tongue where breasts are masculine!
Yet, while my English-thinking brain is napping,
The Hebrew syllables pitom slip in.

I never dreamed I’d learn to dream in Hebrew
A tongue silenced millennia ago
Yet, twenty years of gnashing teeth together
And, davka, it no longer halts, but flows!

I never dreamed I’d learn to dream in Hebrew
A tongue that mustn’t say the Master’s Name.
Yet, through the labyrinthine city echoes
“Oseh shalom,” to guide me home again.

© Leslie Cohen

 

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