Feautred Poet: Ruth Knafo Setton

Poems by Ruth Knafo Setton

my father eats figs

My father eats figs
the way he eats his past,
spits out the skin.

He eats figs and stares
out the window at Mrs. Grimm’s
curtains: she knows

our secret, how we emerged
from the jungle. She watches me
with green eyes and razor lips.

Witch, djinn, she eats children
and buries their bones
in her backyard--I’ve been there.

My father eats figs
the way he and his father
ate eggs on the farm

of the other world:
boiled in their shells--
peeled and swallowed

whole, devouring a hundred
at a time. He eats figs, watches
my sister and me, white tulle

and ballet shoes, arms raised,
as we pirouette
on broken pavement.

Mom mans the record player.
Neighbors watch.
Dancing dolls with painted

cheeks, swaying like the palms
we’ve already forgotten.
The phone rings--Dad runs inside.

We dance and dance,
and it’s years
before we see him again.

Nightfruits

I held the front door open
and peeked out: wind smashed
my face and chest, pushed
me back but I rooted my feet,
tried not to hear Mom singing
behind me, or smell gold
and green spices simmering
in the agate pot.
"We were nightfruits,"
she shouted over flamenco.
"We bloomed in the dark!"

Dad yelled, "Shut the door!
I'm freezing!" I slammed it.
Fast and hard.
And stood on the porch.
I searched the coiled
and nubbed snow
for a splash of fruit,
glint of sun and blood.

Pinkblack, silent,
it waited
for my rubber boots
to crunch. Tim Unger hid
at the corner, ready for ambush.
Cars smoothed past, sealing ghosts
inside, moving their heads
to music I couldn't hear.
They snapped, red as toreadors,
as they turned the corner.

love in tetuan

You ate the nine small
mice, fed couscous
to a corpse, and collected
moon foam in a jar. You walked
backwards through the market,
backwards through your life, past
the orange tree. Past Papa beating
Maman, and Uncle sleeping
with your sister, down the wadi,
south and west into the screaming
desert where the Blue Men crouched.
They made you a bed of sand, little sister,
that curved like a wave, enfolded your hips.
You lay staring at the black sky--
the answers swept past you--
the forked garden, the masked women,
the children who laughed
with flame lips, the sun ray buried
under tiles.
The sea glittered, yellow-eyed.
As you stepped over the cliff,
the wind knocked you back.
You can't sink: too full of moon foam;
can't die: too stuffed with mouse hearts;
can't make a sound: dead
grains crowd your tongue.

speaking in tongues

I hear ticking--
waves beating dream-time--
the shoebox abandoned in the street?
Small, a girl's patent leather shoes,
so shiny she saw her hunger.
The soldier sets down the detonator--
small silver device, wires
like claws--sprouting
from the center of Ben Yehuda.

Come on guys, what if
the box is only a box--
dropped by a young father
on his way home,
and the girl weeps now
for her lost shoes?

We should be speaking thighs
and arms--the soldier's, strained
and arching through khaki
as he stands, legs apart,
hands clenched, watching
the box, the silver wires.
Does he hear the ticking?
He turns his head
and looks at us
behind the barricade.
His eyes--cracked green as the olives
Ezra fed me when I curled
on his lap. He rubbed Tiger
Balm on my shoulders,
and ice down the back
of my neck. I hid oranges
under my shirt, and in my room,
we cut them open with our fingers,
and sucked juice and pulp, biting
white flesh and nubby skin,
each other in our greed.

Listen! We should be speaking
past imperfect, not future
conditional. The soldier's lashes
spiked with sweat, he crouches
next to the box,
tilts his head.

Why doesn't anyone move?
What tongue do they speak?
I am a translator,
well-trained in never-
ending present. See:sucking
to the last drop. See:watching
them fall. See:ticking,
a heart gone crazy.

He closes his eyes, ear cocked.
Last night they threw me
a birthday party
down in the shelter,
so far down
I forgot rockets
and the deadly pierce of sirens.
I couldn't breathe, whirled
to Otis and Wilson, bracelets ringing,
hair wet down my back. James screamed:
This is a man's world!--and we lit candles
and I swore to--

never speak present again?
never dance barefoot?
You will die young, the palm
reader said. See: the lifeline breaking--

the orange came first

The orange came first--
was there ever a doubt?
Not to us, who worked
the pardess. 4 a.m., riding
to the grove on the tender--
open-backed, tented car--
we huddled and watched
the kibbutz stream past,
a river of bodies emerging
from houses. In our hooded
raincoats, armed with clippers,
we advanced: dusky army.

Oranges gleamed in the black trees.
I reached and plucked, one after another,
filling my canvas bag. I heard the rain but
was lost in the light: fire glinting
through leaves. A stubborn one.
I tore the white-fleshed branch, tendrils
of skin, until she dropped into my palm:
diamond-wet nubs rolling
across my heartline.
I carved her open with my clippers,
broke her skin into four.

Someone yelled: the sun is rising!
Hooded shadows moved to the clearing.
I stood there, wreathed
by orange blossoms,
juice licking down chin, throat,
arms, belly, thighs,
to my bare toes--
clinging.
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