Poetry by Erin Mizrahi

                      ​ Andrea Addante CC



Planting language in the sand 

I am dreaming about sleep

                but not sleeping

                in seach of pistachio lokum
     
                               I settle into stonefruits

                                                                                             I want to show you poetry is the only way out
    
                                                              I mean something else entirely

I am staying in the Jewish quarter of the old city 

                               eating olives with my lover


                  we share a courtyard with a tourist who is telling everyone 

                                                                   he is writing a novel

                                                                                                 I am telling everyone this place is trying to kill us

I am writing a book about silence


I’ve told no one


                I need to write but the novelist 

                                                                                                 has spread his novelist things across our only table


                                I am in search of a café and an old man tells me he knows one

                                                                              as I turn the corner to follow

                                                              the old man slides his old hands up my shirt

                                                                              and all I am thinking is

                                                                                             this land
            
                                                                                             how it takes


                                I am searching for a reason
    
                                                               in the ancient stone
            
                                               brick by brick


                                               I am fantasizing that I have removed it all

                                                                                                            the Jerusalem Stone

                                                                                                                                           while the city was sleeping

                                  and I have buried it deep 

                                                                                 in the desert


                                               where the land splits open                       like a confession

                                                              but what if I replaced it all with another stone

                                                                                             would that new stone become Jerusalem Stone

                                               but the heart of a city should not be a stone

                I am searching for shelter from the relentless sun

                                                                and I am thinking about trauma

                                                                                       I mean, aren’t you?

                                                                                                                     I mean is anyone sleeping?

                                                                 I am thinking about my family

                                                                                 how we’ve carried a dead language across oceans
    
                                               because where could we safely put it down

                                                                  Quien no sabe de mar, no sabe de mal


                                                                   I am writing the archaeology of silence

                                                                                                                   my lover calls it alchemy
                
                                                    to take a disappeared thing

                                                                                      and love it like you can see it

                                                                                      and I think we could




​

The Apartment


My tiny New York apartment is getting tinier. Incrementally. You probably wouldn’t even 
notice it, but it startles me. I am suddenly much closer to things that were always close but not like 
this.


Today it seems as though my body were touching everything all at once. I ask the apartment 
if it is shrinking. It says it is not. I ask it if it would like a glass of water. No, it would not. 


I search online to see if anyone else has experienced the sensation of their own home constricting 
around them but all I find are articles about anxiety and living in crowded cities. That’s not it 
though. 


I buy a large area rug on Wayfair. It’s beautiful and brightly colored in mostly warm tones. I find this 
soothing. The pattern appears Turkish and reminds me of me my grandparents. This too, soothes 
me. 


I measured it so that it fits the entire floor of the studio perfectly, its edges gently pressing the base 
of the wall. It feels scientific. I have never done anything that feels scientific.


I climb into bed which is really a cloud and am swallowed into sleep. I wake to find the edges of the 
rug curled over me. I like how warm I am between the rug and the cloud. I knew you were miniaturizing 
I tell the apartment.


It replies, But don’t you like how warm you are between the rug and the cloud? I nod but insist it is not 
sustainable. At this, the studio constricts again. My cloud is now a single pillow and the rug is 
impossibly thick wallpaper. 


My plants have all fled in the way that birds and animals migrate when there is danger. I want to flee 
but I also want to see just how far this will go. 


I want to name this beast. It tries to reason with me. This catches me off guard and my response is 
to bare my teeth. It sighs. I hiss. 


It pulls me closer and asks if it is true that all living things grow. I say it is true, but what–
It asks if I am growing. I believe that I am, perhaps not physically anymore but emotionally, I think. 
It tells me it too has the right to grow, does it not?


After so many have settled and crowded into in its creaking body, doesn’t it too deserve the chance 
to be more? This seems absurdly reasonable in a way that makes me want to coo at it and feed it 
sliced bananas and peeled grapes.


But why are you shrinking, I cry! Why aren’t you growing?
I didn’t have the space to grow, so I grew the other way. It suddenly revealed hands that were rivers and these 
river hands gestured to show how it grew in instead of out. I nod. 
​

The ceiling is pressed up to my head. I feel it breathe. Its breath is sweet but sad. I didn’t know 
space could be sad. It tells me it is not. it tells me that it feels more at home in itself than ever 
before. 


I did not know that a home could not feel at home in itself. I wonder how I could feel at home in a 
home that did not feel at home in itself. 


It is ready to be alone. I nod. 


I gather my things which are now just a few almonds, a lone succulent, and detangler. I hold my 
shoes in my hand and slip out slowly, gently kissing the door behind me. 


​
​
Erin Mizrahi is an emerging poet, educator, co-founder and director of Cobra Milk, a monthly reading and music series featuring emerging and established voices. She is a member of Brooklyn Poets, Asylum Arts, and a 2019 Inquiry Fellow with the Institute for Jewish Creativity. Erin is also a former Shoah Foundation fellow with the Center for Advanced Genocide Research. As an academic and a poet, her writing has centered around trauma and the many manifestations and possibilities of trauma narratives. She is an adjunct at CUNY Hunter College where she teaches English. Erin has also taught at Brooklyn College, Fordham University, and the University of Southern California.