the call to prayer
I once mistook for prayer
wakes me.
And there’s the rug’s gold-
burgundy weave,
crown of spray and plume-like leaves
on the wall.
Less a maze of eyes,
more like a peacock flowering,
and the crimson contour in the middle—
it almost looks like a wine
glass overturned. My mistake,
not knowing this was meant
for kneeling,
made of threads and hands
from Damascus,
and forgetting the faithful
who wouldn’t touch such a glass and
funny it crossed my mind
this sharp red shape could
be the graven image
of liquid pouring out
into this cold hour’s air
and how odd to be up now,
knowing how little I know
of prayer.
Jerusalem
Annie Kantar’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, as well as The Adirondack Review, The American Literary Review, Barrow Street, Birmingham Review, Cincinnati Review, Drunken Boat, Entropy, Literary Imagination, Poetry International, Poet Lore, Rattle, Tikkun, and elsewhere. Her translation from the Hebrew of With This Night, the final collection of poetry that Leah Goldberg published during her lifetime, was published by University of Texas Press (2011), and was shortlisted for the ALTA Translation Prize. She directs the English Program at Shalem College in Jerusalem.