Mantis 22 (Summer 2024)
visceral, velocities
Aviva Betzer
SOS
I circle you, a bitch sniffing for ink. Like Medusa
I write in blood, milk, chalk
I kill people with my eye yet
I wish I were dead.
I hold on to routine, terrified of nights.
I pick at the wound, my daily bread.
I write to my friends:
The car broke down, there’s a power cut, the water’s off.
Talking to you is a bomb.
I think I may have been you in another life.
Dark Journey
I travel along with dull pebbles
In my mouth. I hang on to daydreams
And it takes
Me six minutes to choose an outfit
And six hours to think think think
Seeing through the window
The passing of darker recollections
Of this journey, inside my head.
I am catapulted by words
I no longer contain.
AVIVA BETZER writes in both English and Hebrew. She majored with honors in the studies of Theory of Literature at Tel Aviv University and wrote her thesis on the representations of the Freudian body in the fiction of David Vogel. Her work has been published in Caesura, Chambers Anthology, Arc, The Foundationalist and her published book of poetry in Hebrew, Noise. Another publication is forthcoming in Voices. She is currently a graduate student in the Department of English Literature and American Studies at Tel Aviv University.