LAND BETWEEN

Amboy – Absecon –
Apshawa – Embolink –
Embolh’llol – Embohh’can –
Perth Amboy – Hobo Kink!

The hollow, the covered
the shaggy wet-ground
Hollowed-out on insides
an adze, edges round

Bomopack – Lomow’pek –
Embolink – Manhasset –
Manalapan – Manasquan –
Matawan – Hacken Sex! 

Standing upright
a tobacco pipe
A round pond
white on the inside

Matawan – Paramus –
Piscataway – Metro Ignoramus!
Raritan – Toney Tappan
Whippany – Parsipa Wheee!

A covered swamp near clay
covered swamp and edible roots within
Door to an island, a place of sand
frog-ground, amphibians-on-strand

Musconetcong – Pohatcong – 
Raritan – Mahoras –
Canarsie and Cheesequake
Rockaway and Ho-Ho-Cuss!

Metuchen, south of Minisink
Massapequa, east of Navasink
Rolling hills, stones gathered : there ya go, Rahway
Place-of-Sands vs Place-Away-From : that valley’s Passaic!



The stream that discharges itself unto another
The stream that unites itself with other water
Onto another, almost, oh so imperceptibly
The way water gathers, and with no bother

There are snakes in Secaucus
clays, swamps and mires around us
Where two rivers (rushing at first, then pleasant
the place) of dark night, of having come upon it, at dark

The crooked mouth, the forked river
the creek with many-minds
The river that overflows, from springs
The water that, under pressure, and much weight, dives and sinks

Fenced fort to upland
red cedars and planted land
The meeting-place with poisonous roots
bare narrow point, stones-gathered, Zio Boots

Sycamores and figs
sweet water, citrus and berries
Umm al-naser
Mother-of-Victories

A place of mountaineers
a place prickly, ground great
Al-Hazzati, haazat, ‘azz
thickly-populated with olive trees

Haret ez-Zeitun, Deir al-Balah
monastery of the date palm
St George – he’s the Gorgeous
it’s Jonah’s Caravanserai – it’s the levelled Khan Younis!

Thick with apricots, with watermelons, with palm
jummez and legumes, blocks: blitzed and bombed
Buried: twisted marble columns
taxes-on-beehives, floor-slabs with no-walls

No water, no warning
no oil, no eggs
No light – much smoke
– all rubble, no legs

Metal that flies
bits testing your mettle
Concrete and steel buckle
dusty ground dimples

Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun
Jabalia, Haret ez-Zeitun
Split-olives, spit-pits
Widowing-of-Fatima, death-of-Haroun

Pears-to-waste, citrus-to-rot
shrouds-lain—though, mettle, does not
cave-in: in Rafah, in Bani Suheila,
in Deir al-Balah, and prickly Ghazzah