I Hear the Sirens Wailing
When an approaching firetruck’s siren fills the air,
my German Shepherd stands erect, head tilted,
a plaintive howl resounding from her gut,
alerting the neighborhood wolves,
claiming her ancestry.
When I see the first pictures of carnage,
hear air-raid sirens wailing,
the echo of her primal cry crawls up my spine,
but all I have in my throat,
on October 7,
is a broken whimper.
*
SETZUAN
She’s a prostitute. She’s a man. She’s pregnant.
She’s fourteen.
Tuesday, I fly 8000 miles to see her,
prostitute, man, pregnant,
in Tel Aviv.
She transforms doing Brecht on stage,
downtrodden women, evil men who rule them,
his feminist-Marxist vision:
The Good Person of Setzuan.
On our way back, parents of young women hostages,
peacefully march along the road, demanding:
Netanyahu, go! Now!
We roll down windows, they come close,
we honk our horn in support,
and to shove away the contagious pain
in their raw eyes.
*
Nathaniel Gutman is a filmmaker who has directed and/or written over 30 theatrical/TV movies and documentaries internationally, including award-winning Children’s Island (BBC, Nickelodeon, Disney Channel), Witness in the Warzone (with Christopher Walken), Linda (from the novella by John D. MacDonald; with Virginia Madsen). His poetry has appeared in The New York Quarterly, Tiferet Journal, Pangyrus, LitMag, Constellations, The American Journal of Poetry.
