Where Should the Birds Fly

WHERE SHOULD THE BIRDS FLY AFTER THE LAST SKY?

by janlori goldman

Mahmoud Darwish, 1941-2008

On the road to Nablus I think of you,

your wrecked heart blooming

on rocky hills, a horse’s shadow alone

in a field. Anemones spread

in resolute red— in warning or

welcome it’s too early to say.

A candy store pocked with bullet holes

churns with cement mixers,

makeshift machines coating almonds

in sweet liquid. The shopkeeper says,

Taste this after all you see. In a season

of unripe things, I bite into green almonds,

taxi to the mountain top to watch the village

long in the valley. Gusts of pigeons

blow against stone— all I have been taught

smacks against the rockface.

As a child in synagogue I fit a quarter

into a cardboard slot to plant a tree

in Israel, millions of coins

now tangled roots reaching

for each other in the underworld

that knows nothing of walls.

Janlori Goldman’s first full-length book, Bread from a Stranger’s Oven, was chosen by Laure-Anne Bosselaar for the White Pine Press Poetry Prize (2016). Toadlily Press published her chapbook, Akhmatova’s Egg (2013). Gerald Stern chose her poem ‘At the Cubbyhole Bar’ for the Raynes Prize. Janlori co-founded The Wide Shore: A Journal of Global Women’s Poetry, www.thewideshore.org, and worked with Paris Press on the joint publication of Virginia Woolf's On Being Ill with Notes from Sick Rooms, written by Woolf’s mother, Julia Stephen. Janlori teaches human rights, works at the Center for Justice, and volunteers as a writing mentor for people with cancer. She received an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College.

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