City of Skypapers

Deliciously long lines hang suspended between the holy and the home…This American Israeli poet, teaching, and raising a daughter in the Middle East, acknowledges both the "wreckage of the Byzantine villages" as well as the peril of living in a place where "the antennae at the military base quiver" and where "no one knows what time our daily missile will appear." At the same time, this poet embraces Tel Aviv's quotidian humor writing an ode to the city's garbage collectors whose "clarity" she craves and praising "the season for shedding shoes…every last one of them black." The brilliant cadence of Sulak's poems, "keeping pace with the current" of the Yarkon River along which the poet runs, not only enact, but also celebrate what it means to be alive "in a place where the flowers are old enough to have stories." These poems should be read, perhaps even sung—Sarah Wetzel