from Glass, Water

Amit Ben Ami

screw
 
1
I enjoy how my palm grasps
tiny metal objects,
feeling the weight,
like that of a thick screw
that could be found on the sidewalk
of an industrial zone
& if on it a nut is screwed

then totally.


2
once I figured
that perhaps the point is maximum weight
with minimum volume, but
I know nothing more
than this screw.

 
3
sometimes I find a shekel
or five shekels. 

it’s not the same.

 
4
I once tried to use the screw
and wrote: 

We all would arrive with heavy hearts
No different from a screw in hand.

It didn’t work.


5
with it I walk one
then two hundred meters
awkward, what,

just throw it away?




drawing lesson

this is not a person
those are not trees
& this is not a cathedral—

dark here, light here.
now try.




*
 
spilled coffee
the whole ride we stand
before an empty seat



 
orifice

the little orifice
at the tip of my penis
looks like the little vagina that could
have been mine.

 


frame
 
clouds enter & exit
the window frame.

the window remains.

I turn around,
even the window doesn’t remain.
before me ice cubes melt on the counter,

outside
an endlessly open sky.

 


salad
I like salad. I am losing my individuality.
          —Gertrude Stein

a structure composed of many,
colorful. wherever you look they 

flicker
between the totality & the particulars.
the vegetables,

the meal on the table, the furniture . . .

where does this lead?

sticking the fork in,
beyond the range of pain
I am protected.

translated from the Hebrew by Lonnie Monka

Read the original in Hebrew

Listen to the original read by the poet:

In Israel, Amit Ben Ami is a fresh, rising voice in the world of poetry. Though written in Hebrew, Amit's poetry is heavily influenced by the work of American poets, including Gertrude Stein, the Objectivists (especially George Oppen), and the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets (especially Charles Bernstein). Given my own interest in the influence of American poetry on Israeli writers, it has been an amazing experience to help bring the American impact on Hebrew letters back into English. I hope that this cyclical cross-lingual influence only expands and gains momentum!

The poems presented here are from the first section of Amit’s first full-length poetry collection, Kos, Mayim (Glass, Water; Barhash, 2020). The section, titled “Pictures,” presents poems that utilize pared-down language and directly engage readers with curious features of day-to-day life and the playfulness of language. These poems present a contemplative attitude as well as inviting us to join the meditation. As a translator, I am interested in the tension between what seem like universal ideas and the thick-yet-subtle swarm of cultural particulars.

In Kos, Mayim, the passing references to Jewish mourning rituals and Israeli traffic hint at cultural experiences that are particular to Israel, yet they run the risk of losing their intensity if they were explained. To me, it is interesting that the editor of Asymptote chose poems in which the clear allusions to particularly Israeli contexts seems minimized. Thus, we could say that this little selection focuses on the more universal spirit of Amit’s writing—a universal spirit that is perhaps most clearly expressed in a poem like “orifice.” At first, that short poem might come across as crude, and even dismissable. Yet, further consideration unravels the experience of inspecting one's own genitals, noticing their difference, and then how the difference appears to disappear. Standing on one foot, I would say that Amit’s poetry echoes the thoughts of his favorite predecessor, Gertrude Stein: “The difference is spreading.”

Amit Ben Ami (b. 1988) is a poet and translator, born in Jerusalem and living in Tel Aviv. He is the author of Kos, Mayim (Glass, Water; Barhash Micropress, 2020), and translator of Shira Vedikduk (Poetry and Grammar, Dhak, 2021), which is comprised of two lectures by Gertrude Stein: Poetry and Grammar and Composition as Explanation. Amit holds a master's degree in English literature, and is a member of the urban kibbutz Ruth.

Lonnie Monka is a poet, writer, and aspiring academic, living in Jerusalem. Lonnie’s poems can be found in various online and print journals, and he enjoys exploring the overlap between performance art and poetry. As a Ph.D. student at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, he is researching orality in modernist art through a study of David Antin's “talk poetry.” He is also the founder of Jerusalism, a nonprofit organization for the promotion of Israeli literature in English, and the editor of Jerusalism’s literary magazine, Halah (meaning: “Onwards!”).