Henry Israeli
Scar Tissue
We cut the top off the mountain to better
reach its entrails. This is how we show love—
through destruction. A cool glass of iced tea
sweats beautiful beads, but I can’t bring
myself to lift it to my lips. How can a life
woven warp to woof ever learn to wag?
There are pills for that! says the phone.
I stir in some honey, make a storm with
a swirling spoon, then peel back the gauze
to sterilize the lesion with saline, seawater’s
briny twin. It takes weeks, but the wound
eventually closes like an eye slowly drifting off,
dreaming it was once clean, innocent,
and so full of hope it couldn’t stop weeping.
Ode to the Cicada
Like Persephone seized by Hades, the cicada
descends deep underground for years.
They’re called nymphs when in that other realm,
and like Lampades, nymphs of the underworld,
cicadas can drive people mad, their shrieking
so loud it causes disorientation and hearing loss.
They emerge only to breed, and that’s what all
the racket is about—courting a mate, fucking,
laying eggs, and dying in this strange land
of sunshine and trees. The world, for them,
is upside down. Time, for them, is upside down.
Before they emerge, they live for years in deep dirt,
wrapped in a monk’s robe of their own shit,
meditating to the mantra of their ancestors.
The day they burrow upwards and shed
their youthful skin, the last phase of their life
begins in a screeching carnal frenzy.
So much to accomplish before giving themselves over
to the violent hunger of wasps, birds, and spiders.
When they’re gone, the nights grow quiet again,
before the crickets take up their winged violins
to serenade us back into our underworld.
Henry Israeli is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Our Age of Anxiety (White Pine Poetry Prize: 2019), and god’s breath hovering across the waters, (Four Way Books: 2016), and as editor, Lords of Misrule: 20 Years of Saturnalia Books (Saturnalia: 2022). He is also the translator of three critically acclaimed books by Albanian poet Luljeta Lleshanaku. His poetry has appeared in numerous journals including American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Plume,and The Harvard Review, as well as several anthologies. Henry Israeli is also the founder and editor of Saturnalia Books.
