Download the audioLeah Falk
I visit strangers in their houses,
tape them telling how they got here. Museum
of the voice,
a clean brook coursing over artifacts
of a burned house, objects
that have lost their homes.
Tell me about your decision to move to Israel—
(shallow bowls used for offerings at home,
some with handles shaped like spines or noses)
Did you grow up in a Zionist home?
You shall mortify yourselves (the text burned off)
(Holes in the tract of Thanksgiving)
Describe your first impressions.
A horned lake A bird’s beak
Before the meat the priest says grace
first the little letters, then the Lord
How did your family react?
Facsimile of the scroll of the war of the sons of light
against the sons of darkness: tracts of land
over millennia slowly float apart
as the path the courier took from page
to page is scrubbed away. In the dim
corridor, slivers from century one. A slit in the skin
of what we don’t know.
Do you still have family in America?
Do you still have family in _______?
Do you still have _______ in America? Do you still
have_____ in _______?
Describe your neighborhood.
I come from New York. There’s something for everyone here.
I can say that.
Describe your neighborhood.
When I was eleven, my parents said,
“We’re going to the land of the Jews.”
Is there anywhere you wouldn’t go alone?
It could be any city in the world.
Deep in the dew, my heart is beating.
How long have you lived here?
A rag ripped from the hem of a dress
that I tie to a rope braided with millions of other rags.
How long have you lived here?
I have to be able to leave this country
on a moment’s notice.
Is there anywhere you wouldn’t go alone?
No. No.
