Your Body’s Tired, I Hear Myself

Even when I’m alone my body acts like it’s conversing.
I look at the face bent over its chest,
at the hands falling to its thighs,
& somehow I know it’s defeated.
Your body is tired, I hear myself
switching off the mirror, folding up its movements.
But who can go to sleep amidst this revelry.

Yakir Ben-Moshe

Yakir Ben-Moshe won the Israel Prime Minister’s Prize for Literature in 2012. He has published four books of poetry and one of children’s literature. He lives with his wife and children in Tel Aviv, where he is the Literary Editor of the Bialik House, as well as a teacher of creative writing.

Dan Alter is a poet and a translator. His most recent collection, My Little Book of Exiles, was published by Eyewear Press in 2022. It was also awarded the poetry prize at the Cowan Writers Awards. He lives in Berkeley with his wife and daughter where he makes his living as an IBEW electrician.