Otter Cove

By YEHUDIT BEN-ZVI HELLER

 

I took three stones from there:
one from the water
one from the sun
and a small one
to grow.

Co-translated by the poet and Stephen Clingman

 

Yehudit Ben-Zvi Heller is the author of Ha’isha Beme’il Sagol (The Woman in the Purple Coat), Kan Gam Bakayitz Hageshem Yored (Here, Even in the Summer It Rains), and Mehalekhet al Khut shel Mayim (Pacing on a Thread of Water).

Stephen Clingman is Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts. His most recent book is The Grammar of Identity: Transnational Fiction and the Nature of the Boundary.

Click here to purchase Issue 01

Otter Cove

Related Posts

cover of HEIRLOOM

March 2025 Poetry Feature: Catherine-Esther Cowie’s Heirloom

CATHERINE-ESTHER COWIE
Her eye-less eye. My long / longings brighten, like tinsel, the three-fingered / hand. Ashen lip. To exist in fragments. / To exist at all. A comfort. / A gutting. String her up then, / figurine on the cot mobile. / And I am the restless infant transfixed.

Dispatches from Mullai Nilam, Marutha Nilam, and Neithal Nilam

VIJAYALAKSHMI
There is fire everywhere, / both inside and outside. / Unaware of the intensity of the fire, / they maintain silence / like the serenity of a corpse. / From the burning fire / bursts out a waterfall tainted in red. / All over the shores have bloomed / the flaming lilies of motherhood.

The view out of a car window as it speeds along

The Hare

ISMAEL RAMOS
It’s important to decide whether or not you want to be alone, Valeria says. It has to be a conscious decision, you know? Otherwise, you end up stuck like that, in limbo, not knowing what to do, thinking one day someone’s going to come and tell you exactly what you need to hear.