Modern Literature

Tag: Tali Cohen Shabtai

  • The Other Women – By Tali Cohen Shabtai

    The Other Women – By Tali Cohen Shabtai

     

     

    I cannot reach their output
    for now
    Every woman carries within her a month of
    the Hebrew letter Tet * in the counting of some 270 days **
    for birth potential.

    Every woman receives support from Greek mythology of the goddess of marriage, motherhood and childbirth –
    “Hera.”***
    But not everyone realizes
    it.
    And no, it is of no interest that she is the Queen of
    Olympus
    to those who did not choose this
    path, especially as Zeus was pushed into the
    corner.

    And if we to be are more
    concrete,
    every woman is entitled to a ‘birth grant’
    from the National Insurance Institute
    for monthly allowances
    between the legs
    and those women who absorbed the sperm, of course.
    And received

    a fetus as a gift.

    But it’s not just these women we are dealing with
    who experience the other woman
    in their image as a biblical figure
    such as Peninnah
    the wife of
    Elkanah
    who was preoccupied
    with the infertility of
    Hannah

    Or alternatively the other woman
    is like
    Leah, the sister of
    the matriarch Rachel
    who had many sons
    while Rachel was
    barren
    and regretted that her sister was granted with giving birth to
    multiple tribes.

    How I’m going to
    explain to you?

    I feel like
    Leah
    Peninnah
    and Rachel the Poetess

    Can you understand that the yearning for a child that cannot be realized – is a human archetype?
    I will give birth to you anew, my love.

    “A son I wish I had”****.

    A son.

    * Number 9 in numerology.
    ** 270 is the estimated calculation of nine months of pregnancy.
    *** Hera (in Greek Ἥρα) is the queen of Olympus, wife and sister of Zeus, head of the Gods in Greek mythology. The Goddess of marriage, motherhood and birth, and patroness of married women. Among the Romans she was known as Juno.
    **** From Rachel the Poetess’s poem “Barren,” written in 1927.

     

    About the Author

    Tali Cohen Shabtai was born in Jerusalem, Israel, and is an international poet of high esteem with works translated into many languages. She is the author of three bilingual volumes of poetry, “Purple Diluted in a Black’s Thick”(2007), “Protest” (2012) and “Nine Years From You”(2018). A fourth volume is forthcoming in 2021. She has lived many years in Oslo, Norway, and in the U.S.A. She currently lives in Chicago.

  • Two Poems by Tali Cohen Shabtai

    Two Poems by Tali Cohen Shabtai

     

     

    The End

    Look, my father
    the road is becoming shorter
    there is no sense that will change what is coming!

    That’s why I’m preparing a nice note for
    a sudden farewell,
    see, my father!
    Man must make
    provisions
    for the transition between life and death–
    this is purely necessary wisdom,
    it makes no sense to
    rise early for the morning prayer
    and a few hours later
    to already be
    in burial shrouds
    and to eulogize
    the mourner’s prayer – here we need a ritual
    of differentiation
    that will distinguish between
    the profane and the holy.

    In this transition between
    life and death when I tell you
    that our road is becoming shorter, Father.
    Shortening
    There is no option! Even if I suck on
    The Lord God
    and shed blood
    instead of semen

    for one of us,
    the path is becoming shorter!

     

    Further Realization of the Face of Humankind

    How much free surface of exposed
    skin is on the face./ You have to die
    every now and then / When there is no land
    in which to hide the visible / How much
    free space on the face / That’s not
    the way! – Creation could have established
    more pairs in it/ One fewer bump
    at least/ Humankind has already learned
    to thread harmony
    into what there is

    In coming into common sight / This is the abandonment of
    its role / Have you ever informed on this
    to anyone?/ If you’ve delved into
    my opinion of it, of course.

     

    About the Author

     

    Tali Cohen Shabtai was born in Jerusalem, Israel, and is an international poet of high esteem with her works translated into many languages. She is the author of three bilingual volumes of poetry, “Purple Diluted in a Black’s Thick”(2007), “Protest” (2012) and “Nine Years From You”(2018). A fourth volume is forthcoming in 2021. She has lived many years in Oslo, Norway, and in the U.S.A.

  • Three Poems by Tali Cohen Shabtai

    Three Poems by Tali Cohen Shabtai

     

    I am Tali 

    I read prose only in the third person,
    and only translated prose,
    poetry, I also read in Hebrew.

    I love Wislawa Szymborska, she copies in written word
    the creation
    in a brilliant fashion, and was recognized during her lifetime and was not among
    the female poets who danced the ‘dance of death in life’
    for that I lowered her credit.

    I think it’s impossible to tag in one breath! A contemporary poetess with
    characters that preserved the myth of the ‘cursed poetesses’. For they are
    found only in the underground or tomb
    There is no negotiation with this judgement

    Mainstreamism repels me.
    Bestsellers I do not touch.
    I love nonfiction books.
    Newspapers do not count at all as the writing and reading genre.

    And my therapist I address in the second person singular
    while omitting the third degree: “doctor”, it’s ok, it’s acceptable –
    many poetesses have sat in my chair in front of him
    Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath,
    and those who ended up as their own hangman.

    I often write in the first person singular and also to talk
    It is
    my way to circumvent
    myself from afar.

    And do not ask what I often write about! I do not like rhetorical questions that belittle
    my intellect.

     

    Controversial

    I love people who
    are controversial
    that their polemic is spiced with unambiguity
    in doses
    that they eat throughout the day.

    And that taboo is not only for purposes
    of research for them
    in the night hours
    when the darkness encourages humankind
    to communicate
    hormone with hormone in the intercourse
    of two
    at the most!

    There are other women
    who fertilize a number of men
    in a day, and wear a necklace around
    their necks with ‘phallic’ stones
    by the light of day
    they are
    the polyandrous.

    I love controversial people
    like Yeshayahu Leibowitz
    who
    forces us to see with brutal clarity
    the sharp-tonged intonation
    that for various reasons was comfortable for us
    to evade

    he earned Israeli society’s nickname “prophet of the apocalypse.”

    He
    conceived concepts of philosophical questions
    and found in them contradictions
    even though many claimed otherwise –
    for that, I have solidarity with him

    moreover, he did it so
    differently from the accepted definition
    that stimulates and challenges
    my
    intellect

    his sharply-phrased wording and use
    of the paradoxical
    could instigate in me
    an orgasm
    of the sensual type
    in the hours when I read
    his book
    “Five Books of Faith.”

    I like being me
    I don’t flow continuously
    in the water
    that you are sipping now
    I shock your
    digestion
    until the body cries out
    to vomit
    like this poem that is not understood.

     

    Margins of society

    I love remote sights
    they provide an answer to offer a glance at the lives of human beings on the margins of society,
    it’s funny how much transparency there is in them – until I
    see my own life within them.

    Empty and fearful, the impure and lepers, homosexuals and transsexuals, prostitutes and homeless harlots, junkies
    gripped with insanity
    those lacking everything, incurable patients,
    gangs.

    These in these places
    with an element devoid of any status – indeed
    the status indicates location while the role indicates the active part

    It is enough to smell the figurative stench
    in remote places
    to
    understand the departure of these people
    from what was once their role before life on the spine that involved
    expectations of society
    and secondly of their status, where they were before
    in society
    These are two sides of the coin: a status and a role that no longer attach importance to them in these remote places when they are detached like a banknote to a whore on the margins of society
    in an urban alley

    In typography, the margins are the blank part that is commonly left between the body text and the edge of the sheet of paper
    as is well known, the margins surround the text on its four sides and are usually blank

    As in life just not from my angle of view
    the core of the page is the text that the margins
    delineate
    but why wasn’t it mentioned that there are other messages that characterize margins other than being “blank”?

    Like
    constant headlines,
    page numbering or footnotes. In the past it was customary to decorate the margins of manuscripts with illustrations I am sure that even today.

    How lovely such a notebook!

    Think about it! If it weren’t for the margins that are the page’s pillar, the text would not be
    possible
    whether the page margins
    fill a space of 2.54 cm or less.

    But!
    Typically, the reader chooses to completely ignore the existence of the margins and continues reading.
    That’s how it is in life, too.

     

    About the Author

     

    Tali Cohen Shabtai was born in Jerusalem, Israel. She began writing poetry at the age of six. Her first set of poems were published in the Israeli magazine ‘Moznayim’ when she was fifteen years old. Tali has written three poetry books: “Purple Diluted in a Black’s Thick”, (bilingual 2007), “Protest” (bilingual 2012) and “Nine Years From You” (2018). She is a member of the Hebrew Writers Association and the Israeli Writers Association. Tali’s poems express spiritual and physical exile. She is studying the exile and freedom paradox and her cosmopolitan vision is very apparent in her writings.