coffee to go
I wait for Dimi outside the now-notorious Coffee To Go branch outside the Tel Aviv University. “the waitresses’ strike” has been going very well apparently, and if they manage to get the owners to contract their employees via a new union it would be a national precedent that is likely to make the jobs of thousands of workers more fair and rewarding. me, I once had an unfortunate 2-day stint in a fish restaurant in Golders Green that just did not go down very well. I like to think that I am good at serving people in other ways. anyway, I settle in for my free cup of tea and a wet browse through a copy of ‘Maayan’, which is one of about a dozen roughly tri-annual poetry/culture/politics magazines that have propped up in Tel Aviv in recent years. some are more political than others. this one is made of thin, pink paper. I find a poem that I like, and attempt to translate it into English. It is called ‘Hands’ by Naama Gershi:
evening.
beginning of summer, or end of spring.
the streets of Jaffa filled with the deluding scent of citrus
the ghosts of orange groves
the ghosts of little white flowers
and a smell penetrating the moving wall of buses
of chicken carcasses, of staircases.
in the local bar with a new guy.
conversation lines mingle with cigarette smoke
sentences delivered, responded to.
what beer is good,
life choices, university, hobbies.
a self-assured bartender evacuates
empty glasses to a small window
filling new ones, his look averted.
inside a small window
black hands take dirty glasses away
lipstick traces, dry foam
cigarette butts, ashes, serviettes.
black hands, faceless, inside a small window
climbing up my throat
erasing a smug smile
erasing, too, a new guy, spring,
mocking me
my “scent of citrus”.
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