A Literary Magazine in Support of the Jewish Community
Eve as an Activist Among the Ruins
—in memory of Aysenur Eygi
She scales the tree and from the top can see—
on the horizon smoke rising from behind
olive groves. She climbs down and while
the Adam sleeps, which he often does,
she goes out through the garden gates.
No one outside notes her nakedness,
how her bare feet do not touch
the ground. She walks among
the cemeteries and their fresh mounds,
their stones piled with stones,
sees the air etched with screams left behind
by the missing and aches for the drawn faces
of those who remain. She passes
towns and fields of barley and beans
and proceeds down palm lined roads
to a fence as high as Eden’s trees.
It is scabbed and scarred
with skin and barbed with thorns
and strung with limbs. She climbs
and from the top, sees no stars,
no sky, no horizon or sun
rising—only thousands of eyes
weeping sand and shattered bones.
She descends the fence and walks
among the throng, a nation
of kith and kin eating gravel
ground from ancient rocks.
Below are people hunched
in caves clutching scrolls, singing
praises and pop songs and crying laments,
who carry nothing but urns—filled with ashes
of holy books, incinerated remains
of jidas and sidis and swaddled babes.
Beside the dispossessed stand sentries
with guns that writhe like snakes.
Each shouts in a voice like
Eden’s god. They order people
to leave, to stay, to head east
then west, then to the sea.
Bombs and bullets fall
from clouds and turn
nameless people into rubbled dust.
Eve searches for their names which she finds
in a box and returns what she can to the dead*:
Abdel, Rahim, Karim, Adam, Alma, Celine, Eliana, Fatima, Yasser, Hersh, Eden, Carmel, Ori, Almog, Malak, Maryam, Muhammad, Muhammad, Muhammad, Nour, Salama, Sarah, Tariq, Tala, Youssef, Toleen, The Son of Anwar, The Daughter of Dina, The Son of Rahima, The Daughter of Zainab…*
To the living, Eve vows she will
tear down Eden’s walls,
shake all the apples from the trees
until the one that contains
peace is found. She will
tell her sons before it’s too late
that a god who favors one
is not to be trusted, that all people
who empty their pockets
of lies and truths are the chosen ones.
She garbs herself in a thousand
funeral shrouds, climbs the fence
and for the first Eve time feels pain.
On bleeding feet,
she arrives at the garden gates
and finds them chained and locked
and through the bars sees the Adam
in uniform, one hand fondling his cock,
the other on the trigger of a bullpup
rifle aimed at her head.
* Names of a small sample of the over 700 Gazans killed in the war before their first birthdays and over 70 known murdered Israeli hostages.
Dick Westheimer
Dick Westheimer lives in rural Southwest Ohio with his wife and writing companion, Debbie. He is winner of the 2023 Joy Harjo Poetry Prize and a Rattle Poetry Prize finalist. His poems have appeared or forthcoming in Only Poems, Whale Road Review, Rattle, Abandon Journal, Cider Press Review and ONE ART. His chapbook, A Sword in Both Hands, Poems Responding to Russia’s War on Ukraine, was published by SheilaNaGig in 2022. You can find out more at www.dickwestheimer.com.
