cambridge book review

Analogies

Elli Hazit

You study scientific decay
Regeneration,
compounded and recited
As if the memory
will increase the knowledge,
move history forward,
achieve something as yet unattained
When aren’t we just
plugging holes,
whispering reassurances,
stopping crimes before they occur?

Really, to lay a foundation
takes poetry, perseverance,
Capital,
stakes in a beatific future
of solutions

Don’t shake her
her brain will never be the same
Give something gentle back
At least there’s that
My memory fails me
That’s something like the heartache
every life contains
The receptacle is noisy, unpredictable,
misbehaving, and contagious
Blends appetite with waste
until the herd moves forward
into a state of grand preoccupation

Water, necessity
No brand,
braided uncertainties,
callous lovers
Only these little hopes
of improvement

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____________________

Elli Hazit was born in San Francisco in 1960. She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her master’s degree from Boston University. Hazit lived in Paris, France from 1983 to 1997. Her writing has been published in the International Herald Tribune, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and the Cambridge News. She has also produced radio programs for WORT-FM, Madison. One of her stories, “The Tangerines and the Dogs,” was broadcast internationally on the BBC World Service Programme.

June 15, 2011 Posted by | poetry | , , | Leave a comment