Bright Lord and Bad Guys

Bright Lord (there are muscles everywhere)

• I am tapping the pulse of the faucet water
• and winding a string of light from the rain gutter
• I’m pressing the window glass which presumes
• tension between inner and outer
• my bright-toothed lord, it hurts
• the fatigue of clicking future tense
• into the present past, the stiffened tongue
• on my watch face, my daughter cries
• when she sees the kitchen
• clock she cannot tell
• that kind of time. And compared
• to a water drop
• the screech of the street cats
• and bus breaks—your touch
• is predictable, my lord, and
• compared to the painted
• highway, most irregular,
• and compared to the pears,
• bitter, and compared to the baby carriages
• rolling across the baggage compartment
• of the bus, their mothers praying from little
• instruction books, hands held
• in the rubber loops above them,
• full of inadvisable faith.

Bad Guys

• Did God make the bad guys, too? My daughter asks me.
• We have just read about Pharoah and hardening hearts,
• we’ve just read about Hamman.
• I am trying to figure out what the pre-
• 1967 borders of this country are, and where
• the key to the bomb shelter is. I tell her
• “Everyone is born neither good nor bad.
• They decide what they will become.”
• She looks at me unconvinced. I am trying

• to show her the difference between sharing
• your toys with your friends, though you don’t
• want to, and letting anyone touch your private
• body when you don’t want them to.
• “Will you be a good guy or a bad guy
• when you grow up?” I ask. “I’m not
• a guy,” she says.

Marcela Sulak’s third poetry collection and first memoir are forthcoming with Black Lawrence Press, where she’s published Decency and Immigrant. She’s co-edited Family Resemblance: An Anthology and Exploration of 8 Hybrid Literary Genres. A 2019 NEA Translation Fellow, her fourth translation, Twenty Girls to Envy Me. Selected Poems of Orit Gidali was nominated for a 2017 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. She hosts the podcast “Israel in Translation,” edits The Ilanot Review, and is an Associate Professor at Bar-Ilan University.