FEATURED WRITER
LEAH KOGEN-ELIMELIAH
Bomb Shelter
summer away from home
on a kibbutz in the north
there is a bomb shelter
when the raindrops from the sky
are too big to swallow
you are warned of its poison
this safety zone
turns to campgrounds
where the sun strikes
and a boy covered in flesh of man
invites a girl in jokingly warning her
that he’s about to force himself
down her throat
my daughter a witness
to his – story
hangs on over the phone
gripped with tears in her eyes
by the loud cries
of the girl who’s only twelve
her camper whose emptying innocence
oozes through the broken concrete
through the what if’s…
on the other end of the life-line
I am holding my daughter hostage
afraid she too might fall inside
the bomb shelter
where this boy of man
thirteen in age
sings songs of rape
whose dreams
ferment
simmer
boil over like nightmares often do
then set his future on fire
burn the girl
her hair
her small hands
he leaves her there bare
will we use a tranquilizer to put him down
who will seduce the justice system
tell me my daughter says
do we believe young girls
will his parents be notified
anger boiling over I wonder
will this young girl metamorphose
into a woman
will this boy lock up for good
will someone teach him how to speak
to girls
at eighteen will he respect
their bodies reference their minds
appreciate their skin
challenge what he’s heard
or didn’t learn
will he unchain himself
from a trapped mind
inside this bomb shelter
in the north
it’s raining in Afghanistan
men latch on to flying U.S. military planes
I watch them fall out of the sky
rolling off the small
of the back of America
while in the White House
officials are officiating a wedding
and the public is frantic
reports mount, bombshell television scenes
unexpected lifeline is a haphazard
can someone please evacuate the news
missing women
where are the children going to go
this emptying is like any extraction, miscalculation
their land foreign to the forgotten
soldiers picking up body rubble
dusting off shoes from logos
eyes collecting eyes, scattered limbs
mothers cupping tears
drink up Kabul
noses look for daughters too
their own inhale death
heads with badges on their chests signal West
dogs unleashed sniff out
causes, resources, excuses
opinions
fall out of the sky, off, on
America does not carry much weight
here
Taliban led Afghanistan does not hold much leverage
on America another unseemly beauty mark
in the shape
of unsolved cruelties.
With its inlay of internal division.
And what of the City? What of
the stray cats? I heard
Kabul’s air pollution may be even deadlier than war.[1]
Undo
undo her the way she undid
your shoes and your sick bed
undo her early death
pitied life undo
the eery bed
untangle her sick body
altering her breath
in painless surrender
leave her body to nature
relinquish her story
unleash her yearning
to swallow hope
unfasten the eyes
release her wounds
her cries release her moans
return her limbs
they have been misplaced
everyone and everything
she deserved bring back
let the news of her death
be left to the guards
guarding her sick bed
unwrap my memory of her
as I make loops
with every missing you
report back only good news
bad news only bring more bad news.
[1] From an AP article By RAHIM FAIEZ
Afghan capital’s air pollution may be even deadlier than war, 2019
Leah Kogen-Elimeliah is a poet, essayist, short story and nonfiction writer from Moscow, currently living in New York City. She is an MFA candidate at City College of New York, Founder and Director of the WordShedNYC Reading Series and an Editorial Associate for Fiction literary magazine. Leah has collaborated on various poetry/visual art projects with choreographers, dancers, musicians as well as videographers experimenting with multimedia and poetry. She’s read her work on The Red Stage organized by Creative Time, The NYC Poetry Festival, The Higher Ground Arts Festival, and has been selected as a Public Humanities/Arts Graduate Fellow for the Zip Code Memory Project supported by Columbia, CCNY, NYU, Yale and the Social Science & Humanities Research Council. She is also a mentor with Girls Write Now, a nationally award winning leader in arts education writing and mentoring organization. Her writing focuses on identity, language, immigration, intergenerational trauma sexuality and culture. Leah lives in Manhattan with her husband and their children.
