Yudit Shahar, trans. by Aviya Kushner 

Going to Eat the Whole Box

I have wine and I rolled a cigarette,
wine and cigarettes, or a Hebrew woman who will know about your life.
Yair77 says he is a light-hearted type but serious when that’s needed.
Ofer535 offers that he’s real and will be my best friend.
Letters slink across the screen fast, like ants
that years ago came to live with me in the kitchen.
Who will I know:
woman, seeks man, divorced, two kids at home, Israel.
I take a deep breath and type.
I wanted to find an ideal age range/
preferred family situation/preferred build/religious background/
smoking habits: doesn’t smoke/sometimes
I open a can and pile the yellow kernels in my mouth,
grind it to flakes (Ben Gurion rice) that melt to sweetening nectar,
I am on my way to eat the entire box,
I am on my way to eat it all because the snake in the cave is flicking
his tongue in the darkness.

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Yudit Shahar's "End of the Season" and "Going to Eat the Whole Box" can be read in the print edition of The Arkansas International 4.

Yudit Shahar grew up on the border of Sh’chunat HaTikvah, or “the neighborhood of hope,” in Tel Aviv. She is the author of the poetry collections This Is Me Speaking (2009) and Every Street Has Its Own Madwoman (2013), and recently won the prestigious Prime Minister’s Prize in Hebrew Literature.

Aviya Kushner grew up in a Hebrew-speaking home in New York. She is the author of The Grammar of God: A Journey into the Words and Worlds of the Bible (Spiegel & Grau/ Random House, 2015). She is The Forward’s language columnist and an associate professor at Columbia College Chicago.