Shehecheyanu!! Calul Journal is one year old. And what a year it has been!! With the help of all of you, our contributors and readers, we published 57 issues of art and poetry consisting of individual features and intensive folios. Throughout the year we have published poets from across the globe of all ages and backgrounds. And the folio below is no different. We received hundreds of submissions and the folio was finally whittled down to the 16 poems below: poems that exemplify the complexity and beauty of the human experience from poets of various ethnicities, cultures, and religions. Hakol Calul! (Everything and everyone is included) And may this bridge we are creating here together lead to more language, more conversation, and perhaps someday true human understanding with each other.
When I considered what sort of art fulfilled the theme I requested from all of you: bring two disparate things together and have them work together, I remembered the artists who create with the most unlikely medium – salt. . . .Yes simple salt. Simple. Cheap. Yet, we would not survive a day without this basic white substance. It enhances the taste of our food and sweets and salt plays a crucial role in maintaining human health. It is the main source of sodium and chloride ions in the human diet. Sodium is essential for nerve and muscle function and is involved in the regulation of fluids in the body. Salt retains a subtle transparency and a long historical symbolism in many cultures. Salt seems to possess a close relationship to human life beyond time and space. And in Israel/Palestine, right on the border between Israel and Jordan, one of the seven wonders of the world exist: The Dead Sea, the lowest and saltiest sea in the world.
I hope you enjoy the following poems and the incredible artwork. Together with all of you Calul will continue to publish exquisite and meaningful poems in conversation with all kinds of artwork. All are included. All are welcome. Hakol Calul!
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On Being Human Today I feel like a fingernail of time cartwheeling along the river of life. Sometimes I am a fever— sometimes I break a stone. But I am always listening to the bittersweet parade. I ask the world How can it be good ignoring all those hearts burning in the wind? Burying the light inside so much shadow? And the world replies by opening every window on thoughts of death my desperate mind refuses— singing its song with no end, hurling its greedy heat and hard, unhumble cross at time’s inevitable, mortal sway— then tumbling into darkness anyway. —Michelle Bitting
Nǚ ér
Gods are human-born. I know because I gave birth to one, a spirit I pray to before shutting the bedside lamp.
I named her Meigui,
her body my white 玫瑰 (Méiguī: rose),
her soul my 美鬼 (Měiguǐ: beautiful ghost).
The fetus leeched against my sternum as I kept the bedroom door open just a crack, enough to see a gruff shadow.
She wears my childhood shoes,
I kneel by her feet,
carefully looping the laces.
America preached that human will was enough to overcome anything. We built heaven to fight death. My parents rocked me in the belly of our whaling vessel, immigrants seeking to erase time.
Yet I prayed,
a prey of God,
the spirit growing inside my body.
She is the only holy thing I will leave behind in this sinned world. The being that coos into my ear as I drift off.
—Joann Xie 
The Eclipse is a Duck
Now that most ordinary
of birds with the light
brown wings
thinks she’s an angel.
She rustles through reeds,
lifts her face like a flute.
She doesn’t quite ask
to be worshiped.
But when daylight shuffles,
it’s clear,
she’s the living ace,
the upside down
secret furious gold.
— Deborah Bacharach 
Ars Poetica
And I wanted to be
the woman who wears a yellow sunhat
in her backyard, never mind the heat,
squatting and digging, never mind the dirt,
knowing instinctively where and how far apart
and how deep to place the seed to everything
that will bring me beauty, nourishment,
and that far-down-into-the-earth fulfillment
gardeners wax poetic on, so in touch with
even the great-great grandmother of Mother Nature
that they glow with all the colors of Eden
and then some.
But I am impatient
with measurements and approximations
of depths and widths, impatient and lazy
with cumbersome rocks always
jutting up or lying around
where they shouldn’t be,
and I am not grateful for weeds
strangling all my good intentions
or dirt shoved up my fingernails,
and I am not grateful for knees
imprinted with mud though I love
the first sight of new tomatoes and lettuce leaves,
the aroma of fresh oregano and basil,
the AH! of blossom, any blossom,
when it welcomes itself to the world.
— Marjorie Maddox
Incomplete Winters
We were charged for
a small blossom of hope.
It bore fruit without sepals.
Its pollen, moth-eaten,
lay at the nadir of fertility.
The seasons were meager;
the incomplete winters, faulty
marked by clear, sunny skies.
We searched the meadow for that
single, fruit-bearing blossom.
To silver it with pain.
To gild it with oblivion.
To forget the summers owed
to us and the holiday bonuses
of a spring evening faint
with the scent of the night-
blooming jasmine. When
the resin-gatherer arrived,
we hailed him as a saintly figure
only to imprison him, alive,
inside a hermetically sealed,
suffocating bud, leaving him
to perish for want of breath.
— Cassandra Alogoskoufi
Voices
Butter on the counter, one thumb
scooped out. Confessions from the teen
a decade later-the jam, the butter, the candy.
But she seemed so good. But she
followed the rules. Seamlessly
seemed to sense the order
of obedience. After the deep
freeze, three weeks near zero,
we all changed. Even the air
outside. As if a scouring pad
came down with those Arctic
winds. No fox, no coyote, no owl.
No more sound of hunt and mate
in our evening air. I go hollow
with longing to hear them again.
There are two children
inside each of my two children.
The child they show me, and
the child they are. My voice:
the first they heard, curls
into their ears, crooning
lullabying, or berating.
Cloaked in the silver feathers
at my temple: my love
underneath every warning,
every guidance. Resist-
ance grows in my half
child & half woman. If
I were dissected I’d be half
them. Night-carved. Hoot
and growl, purr and yelp. Bark
like a screech that someone loves,
soothing sounds which send us
calmly into dream.
— Lara Payne 
First Fruits
What if your land is barren?
How long will you continue
To woo her with love;
To bury in her soil your first fruits,
To salt and soak the rocks of deceit?
After all, from her you came,
And to her you shall return.
How can you lay your head
In your mother’s lap, while your hands
Have spilled this blood?
*
After the flood
All the words that never
Had the chance to shape meaning
Will demand their dignity
From the Master of all worlds.
And only He alone
Will be able to say over them
Kaddish.
*
If only you knew
That exile is necessary,
That you will rise like a lion,
That salvation is near,
That days of mourning will turn to joy,
That this very summer month
Holds within it the secret of redemption,
That a spark of the Messiah is within.
*
At night I dream
of tunnels,
hunger,
skeletons,
children,
empty pots.
By day
hill dwellers,
olive trees,
water,
weeping mothers.
And all day and all night
voices rise and fall —
the binder,
the bound
in the silence
of the Mount of Mercy.
*
Who will pursue you, justice?
Perhaps you are a woman
Fleeing from herself?
Perhaps, a man hiding from his maker?
Perhaps, two lost souls
Competing with one another,
Over a lost plot
Of God.
— Tamarah Touvian
Let My Right Hand Forget For my students who study WWII history Today my student asked me how to ask a question If our elders will not tell us what happened, how Do we seek that knowledge they hold in deep dark Places of their memories, how do we avoid shock At their trauma. Is comfort even possible, if I am Not clever enough to remember all that has never been Explained to me? Earnestly, my student asks About the dark places. Earnestly, I think: there is No forgetting, only the search for knowledge. — Samantha Landau
The Long Goodbye The only time I remember wanting my mother in the past decade was when I was giving birth. I want my mommy—the words snarled into my head as I screamed my baby out of my body. Already I was losing her, though I didn’t know it, the plaques silently unfolding in her brain. I don’t know what to do with this rage, this sorrow— to have this woman in my life, texting me for jam and butter over and over because she keeps forgetting she just asked. To have her body, which held me in its soft apron, its worn brown bag. To have her body, not her mind. Every mother I walk past on the sidewalk makes me ache. A dull ache, the kind that spreads up your chest and tastes like hot tea squeezed with lemon, bitter and sweet. — Wendy Wisner
Final Retreat
In the highlands of my mind,
out of my sufferings and musings,
I have built a small temple.
Inside the shrine hall stands no Buddha—
only an open skylight.
There, I place my soul beneath broken glass
and wait for it to burn
under the noon sun.
— Changming Yuan 
Kinship
I’ll join you at the fence,
and we can talk
across. Let’s trade off
being the other’s confessor. Yes
I cursed you
after you burned down my name.
I know,
you were offering back the favor—
I’d done it
for you. Here,
we can lean close and look
over each other’s shoulder,
our meadows
and roads smudged with mad signatures.
No
not the same—
I’ve painted your towns
a flat salt-and-pepper,
swiped ashen
with my inherited shame,
and you’ve slapped
the cheeks of my pastures
dread-welted
with your sacred murder oaths.
Please let’s
reach through the mesh
with our dirty fingers
and touch till the charges equate.
It might
not take forever—
might start to unwrite
both sides of the occupation.
— Jed Myers
Facing West an Ars Amicitia Where the wigeon washes its forewing, sings rock-a-bye to its babes, its green eye patch catches our attention. Where my friend and I welcome the sun into our eyes after three storms and at the beginning of friendship, walking not hurriedly, with binoculars. The bearded iris in regress from its companions agrees, in wind fiddling a song of ruffles, and the fiery eye of the night heron also unhurried, almost extinct, black crown like a top hat, grey suited, white plumes flappers strapped to their heads. A mouse scutters at this junction, where marsh meets bay. In the junction of friendship, I consider how each of us has had our own consolation hour guided by animals from our past: lion, hen, horse, in children's stories that fail to prepare for adulthood. In revising poems I've had to strip roots away to find the essence. Here, we face west to embrace change, the California coast spun by tremor encounters and sneaker waves, the shocking Pacific dip and sharks which take the brave who slip without warning, body chemistrying white. Here we find horse chestnut trees in creases of the body of land, toyon berry and salal, bitterness offered. I place hope in friendship, with caution cold and wide-eyed, take the reed-grass as illustration: it latches onto sand we pass on our way back to the car; and the bullrush, saving birds from downswept detritus. My own grammar offers no solution to uncertainty. I hold onto the binocular body to magnify the caress of each bird. — Laurel Benjamin
Altar
I know no altar.
I sing no blessing.
Imagine me a God
who could want what my hands can offer,
an Eternal Flame extinguished, bless me
on the cusp of a tarnished promise
anoint me with emptiness and may
my bones never rest
until I am someone else
besides someone’s daughter.
I need no altar.
I author my psalms.
Imagine me a God
who wants more
than the amethyst veins of deep rivers
trickling yellow light up their banks
while sparrows chirp the morning into being
just boarders passing through this plane.
I am my own altar.
I sing my own songs.
— Katherine Orfinger 
If Only
Oh the wind, and my fears
I’ve signed the papers, yes, we agree, we will pay
The rose bushes clutch tightly to their blooms
One motorcycle blasts past the stop sign
How loud the engines. The wind
Once I stood on a roof to watch a hurricane tear up the boardwalk
That apartment is vacant now
When my sister sent our mother’s poems to me, I put the box in the closet
This wind brings heat, brings dust
How I long for sleep
— Carol Dorf
Back of Hand After artist Kara Walker Kara prays with charcoal and ink. Words swirl across the canvas like acrobats. Curses and blessings. I hand it back to you. The back of your hand knows when to let go. Words swirl across the canvas like acrobats. Yehuda said a fist was once an open palm The back of your hand knows when to let go. Rachel said color heals. I try to imagine blue lungs. Yehuda said a fist was once an open palm. When I’m not at ease I forget words. Rachel said color heals. I try to imagine blue lungs Green kidney. Red throat. Yellow house. When I’m not at ease I forget words. Am I ever these days, at ease enough to breathe a blue breath? Green kidney. Red throat. Yellow house? Craig lived in our yellow house when it was still gray. These days am I ever at ease enough to breathe a blue breath? Craig said nothing bad had ever happened in this house. He lived in our yellow house when it was still gray. That was before breaking beams, before children. Craig said nothing bad had ever happened in this house before bees found their way through torn screens before breaking beams, before children left and came back and left and came home and Before bees found their way through torn screens. Our pale daughter lost her breath and we had to find it for her. She came back and left and came home and her breath turned gray. Craig said nothing bad had ever happened Our pale daughter lost her breath and we had to find it for her. Rachel said color heals. Purple pansies. Blue bells like small breaths. Her breath turned gray. Craig said nothing bad had ever I pray with fists, with open palms — Dina Elenbogen
Cory’s Shearwater, Azores Islands Her cry—a tired child hauled through a mall—belies the way her wide wings glide her across the sky over the bluing Atlantic, out, back out and back again to check on her one egg laid amid the ragged black lacing of volcano leftovers. We are living inside a caldera, villages built where lava burned a pit into an island spewed long ago from the ocean floor toward existence like something decreed on the eighth or ninth day after. What am I trying to tell you? On Sao Miguel, on Terceira, rental cars must be equipped with a box, a blanket, the number of an avian rescue site, a bird so treasured drivers are required to stop and save the injured. Black and white or painted in bright primaries, Holy Spirit chapels in every rural village and small town invite supplication and praise. A cow’s sweet eyes follow our bus as we pass on this island of happy cows and creamy sweet cheeses. Two beef cattle will be sacrificed for a Holy Spirit feast on Diogo’s farm. 300 will gather there. What am I trying to tell you? All you have to do is write one true sentence, Hemingway said. Write the truest sentence you know. It is possible to live kindly. — Liz Abrams-Morley
Sigalit Landau was born in Jerusalem in 1969, Sigalit Landau is an interdisciplinary artist who works with installation, video, photography and sculpture. Landau graduated from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem in 1994. After several years in Europe and in the United States, she returned to Tel Aviv, and currently lives and works in Israel. Throughout her career, Landau has received significant awards including the America-Israel Cultural Foundation Scholarship (1994), the Wolf foundation Ingeborg Bachman Scholarship, established by Anselm Kiefer (1998); the Nathan Gottesdiener Foundation Israeli Art Award, Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2004); The Sandberg Prize for Israeli Art, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem (2016), French Republic Chevalier decoration of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2017), Honorary Doctorate degree from the Ben Gurion University of the Negev (2017).
Landau’s work has been exhibited globally in museums and leading venues including: MoMA, NY; The Brooklyn Museum of Art; MAGASIN III, Stockholm; Yokohama Triennale, Japan; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; The Israeli Pavilion, The Venice Art Biennale (1997, 2011); Documenta X, Kassel; MACBA (Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona), and many more. Landau’s works are included in major collections: The Brooklyn Museum, MACBA, MoMA, Centre George Pompidou, The Israel Museum, The Tel Aviv Museum of Art and MoCK (The Museum of Contemporary art Krakow).
“I keep creating so that I will not forget memories of my family.”
In 1994, Motoi Yamamoto’s 24-year-old sister died of a brain tumor, and his wife, who had been by his side for 25 years, died of breast cancer in 2016. He experienced shock and sadness. Yet as he faced conflict, Yamamoto gave it shape.
Many of his works are installations of huge patterns drawn with salt. By sitting on the floor and spending long hours drawing, he tries to retain memories that fade with time. Yamamoto creates works to ward against the self-defense instinct of oblivion, looking for a convincing form of acceptance to come to terms with the parting of ways.
「Salt」 - Memory of life.
Salt has always been deeply linked to people’s lives in the East and West. In Japan, it is an indispensable substance for customs such as funerals.
Yamamoto engaged with people’s deaths and how they relate to society. Initially, he addressed various themes such as sutras and end-of-life care using a wide range of materials, but when he took an interest in funerals, the material Yamamoto chose was salt.
Yamamoto started using salt because it represents purification and cleansing, but he was also strongly attracted to the whiteness, with its slightly transparent quality. Salt is a colorless and transparent cube, a crystal. This smooth, gentle color enveloped his heart in an embrace as it was wracked with feelings of loss.
Moreover, the salt that forms an element of his works may have once supported our lives in the past. When Yamamoto started embracing these kinds of thoughts, he began to feel that salt contained a “memory of life.”
It’s been a quarter of a century since Yamamoto started using salt, but it still evokes a special feeling for all who experience his istallations.
The undertaking of returning the salt to the sea involves the help from everyone with whom the purpose of the project resonates. The people who gather on the last day of an exhibition destroy the work, collect the salt, and return it to the sea. Though it may just be a mere moment in the long course of history, the intent here is to return the salt used as a part of the work to the natural cycle once more.
Anat Eshed Goldberg
Having graduated Carnegie-Mellon University with a degree in fine arts, Anat Eshed Goldberg paints and sculpts at her home-based studio, nestled in a lush hillside near Jerusalem.