Two Poems by Tali Cohen Shabtai

1. Literary Discourse
   
   There are ways to cheapen (my) poetry
   They have the rawness
   to turn a creator’s hand
   into material with a different identity. 
   
   Therefore, I do not need poets in my company. 
   
   Poetics is not
   welcoming
   to predefined audiences,
   let alone those who worship it.
   
   Poetics have few ways of embodiment:
   In their heads when I was born a woman
   with breasts, genitalia and ovaries.
   
   A third of God does not converse with
   poets
   even with Him I do not share company.
   
   There are ways to cheapen poetics
   these “poetic people” themselves –
   and their discourse
   with prophets.
   
   ***
   
   2. Had I not Redeemed Inspirations
   
   Had I not redeemed inspirations
   my inner situation would have been better / I would
   increasingly use a “linguistic ruse”
   
   My face would not have taken an elongated shape
   like Modliani’s women/ or the nocturnal depersonalization
   of a woman’s head separated from the body
   reminiscent of Pablo Picasso’s characterization
   that dismantles an object into its elements
   
   Had I not redeemed inspirations? My inner situation would have been better,
   not every personal acquaintance
   in retrospect
   would have been made ‘by the way’ in parentheses:
   Indirectness has direct ownership of the talking
   body,
   acquaintance with the margins has its own esteem —
   
   Had I redeemed inspirations / The body would have adopted a form
   that only Gustav Klimt knew to designate to
   Jewish
   women
   
   in a way that most satiates me.
   Something that 
   would
   fill the emptiness
   
   Others would have, already,
   comprehended
   my
   language.
   
   

[Tali Cohen Shabtai was born in Jerusalem, Israel, and is an international poet of high esteem with works translated into many languages.  She is the author of three bilingual volumes of poetry, “Purple Diluted in a Black’s Thick” (2007), “Protest” (2012) and “Nine Years From You”(2018).  A fourth volume is forthcoming in 2021.  She has lived many years in Oslo, Norway, and in the U.S.A. Tali is known in her country as a very prominent as a poet with a special lyric, “she doesn’t give herself easily, but subject to her own rules”. Tali is living in Chicago.]