Hospital Songs
For Ehud
1
I have a rich history
of waiting
your body swells
feeding on nothing
but time
2
the cure is more painful
than the illness
the cure is a bad dream
we wake
slowly
3
in the long corridor
a bay
three round tables
an urn dispensing water
cold and hot
windows
a crack open
summer air
drifts inward
lazily
two women
share recipes
hoard fears
alarms
burst into song
4
on one table
a lavish spread
a family
saving their loved one
from hospital food
savory quiches
pastries
bowls of fruit
a picnic
without grass
or trees
or fragrant summer air
or jubilant ants
5
clothed in flesh
we are dichotomies
as we grow frail
they tear us
limb from limb
howl
to be freed
*
Eva Eliav received an honours BA in English Language and Literature from The University of Toronto. The daughter of holocaust survivors, she grew up in Canada and now lives in Israel. Her poetry and flash fiction have appeared in numerous literary journals, including Room, The St. Ann’s Review, Emrys Journal, Ilanot Review, Flashquake, The Apple Valley Review, Horizon Review, Fairy Tale Magazine, Stand, Constellations, Minyan, One Art, Gyroscope, MacQueen’s Quinterly and Fictive Dream. She has published two poetry chapbooks: Eve (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2019) and One Summer Day (Kelsay Books, 2021). She has also written a group of fables/fairy tales. Individual fables have been published in fantasy magazines.
