–After Netanyahu’s statement that Three Israeli Teenagers
“Were Kidnapped and Murdered in Cold Blood by Wild Beasts”

–For Brian

All the wild beasts I have been
Are ripping me apart again
I am a spiritual defector
In the time of
In the time of
I have a million excuses
I have failed
All those years I did not march
All those years I sprung
From some other head
From some other head
As some wild beast
As burning eyes
Of a chamseen
I burned the fields
I burned the wildflowers ******* suddenly
I prayed for forgiveness
Kicked the door in
All the doors in East Jerusalem
Now uncles now aunts now cousins
Calling on my wedding day
Why **** they ask ******* can’t I understand
They will not under any law
Any sun
Any surfacing
Sanction my marriage
They are calling on my wedding day
For those three
Murdered
Teens
For now there are riots on the streets
They live in the middle of things
And have never seen
It did not start with those teens
It has never been a passing thing
The broken glass the sirens
Running ******* running
From rockets and blessing
And once I
Was all of this
I’d come out flailing limb
Explode
Like the eyes of a chamseen
Shelters shelters ducking
No it did not start with this
Kicking down the doors with this
In that BLACKOUT
and RAIDED East Jerusalem
*
*

************Now I am in repose in a Chinese dress
************My finger cast  in the Song of Solomon
************The band cast in Hong Kong ****** why
******Why are you calling
On my wedding day
Your voices your reasoning
When I was supine before the streets
Disloyal to the streets
I still chatter in the night while my love sleeps
I am feverish with
In the morning
In the morning
In our new york my love answers me
Knowing you will never speak
To him
He’s just fine my love
Thinks grammar and spelling
Are beside the point
Eguana with an E is just as good
As the real thing
That boy ***** I cry *** that arab boy burned alive
And it didn’t start with him either
With 1500 troops today
and 20000 tomorrow
Gaza on fire Gaza on fire
How will you pray *** I ask  *** uncles aunts cousins
When all the beasts
When all the beasts
Call to the parted seas
To the tide rolling in
To the furthest white crest
What then
What of it all ****** drained
Taken of roar and limb you
Call then
************to this other time
*
******************incorrect
*
************************some hours behind
*
******************************with our fruit peels
*
******************hardening on the table
*
************************to this other other time
*
************where he and I he and I
*
************************************each day
*
******************surfacing

*

Born to a Mexican mother and Jewish father, Rosebud Ben-Oni is a CantoMundo Fellow and the author of SOLECISM (Virtual Artists Collective, 2013). She was a Rackham Merit Fellow at the University of Michigan where she earned her MFA in Poetry, and a Horace Goldsmith Scholar at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her work is forthcoming or appears in POETRY, The American Poetry Review, Arts & Letters, Bayou, Puerto del Sol, among others. In Fall 2014, she will be a visiting writer at the University of Texas at Brownsville’s Writers Live Series. Rosebud is an Editorial Advisor for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts (vidaweb.org). Find out more about her at 7TrainLove.org