Translation Notes
I am particularly drawn to how Shani Arnheim’s poems balance humanity and beauty, alongside the challenges of dislocation and precarity that characterize today’s reality.
—Yoni Hammer Kossoy
They stuffed my soul into a body. I met creatures
that looked like me and they felt like strangers.
They expected me to smile and be polite,
to bow low when someone deserved a slap.
To wear the perfect dress –
not too short, not too long.
Go here showing cleavage, go there covered up.
When I was polite I cursed in my sleep,
when I bowed, my soul
lay down in a coffin,
and even while I was alive
my body became wrapped
in a burial shroud
wound by other people’s desires.
Steam covered the bathroom mirror.
Scent of cinnamon cake breezed through the kitchen.
Sound of laughter skipped from the kids’ room.
Laundry on the line beamed out its bloom.
The sprouts we planted in a pot birthed cherry tomatoes,
its seeds burst in the mouth of a child whose boots were mud-coated,
after he jumped in a puddle in the garden.
I was addicted to the simplicity in happiness.
One day a knock cracked on my front door.
A messenger delivered a suitcase of misunderstandings
packed as shattering presents.
I told him it was the wrong address,
but he couldn’t decode my lips
The suitcase stayed behind,
I went away.
Let us tie our lips together
yours to mine – mine to yours.
We won’t press one lip to another.
We will speak a language that penetrates
under skin and doesn’t touch flesh.
We will guard this language
speaking a union of words.
Acknowledgements
Image credits: Dora Wheeler. Penelope Unraveling Her Work at Night (1886). Silk embroidered with silk thread. Dimensions: 45 x 68 in. (114.3 x 172.7 cm).
The MET in its description of the work remarks: “Although this piece has substantially faded and the fibers have begun to break, the essential image remains intact.” While Arnheim makes no direct or explicit reference to Penelope, the images evoked a sense of having to live out of necessity, rather than choice.
Translator | Yoni Hammer Kossoy
Yoni Hammer-Kossoy is a poet, translator, and educator. Yoni’s first poetry collection, The Book of Noah was published by Grayson Books in 2023, and his translations of Zmira Poran Zion’s collections, I Am Samar and Forbidden to Write About Happiness were published by Daisy Press in 2023 and 2024. The winner of the 2020 Andrea Moriah Prize in Poetry, Yoni’s poems, reviews, and translations appear in numerous international journals and anthologies. Originally from Brooklyn, NY, he has lived in Jerusalem since 1999.
Author | Shani Arnheim
Shani Arnheim, born 1987, is an Israeli poet currently living in Berlin. Her first collection, The Angel of Sodom, was published in Hebrew in 2022, and is forthcoming in English. Her poems have been published in Israeli journals and online, in Hebrew, English and German.
