god’s breath hovering across the waters
978-1-935536-76-5
“With the earnestness of an Old Testament prophet, Henry Israeli traverses personal and historical tragedy—arguing, beseeching. In a brilliant move, Israeli writes, “god blows my hair back with his hot breath,/god with a capital G.” There are many such moments of delight in this deadly serious book. I urge anyone who loves to read to get god’s breath hovering across the waters.”
—Noelle Kocot
“Henry Israeli’s titular god—lower-case g—is a being who must be addressed, supplicated and scolded; also a being who has been stripped of his capital letter as an army officer is stripped of his insignia and demoted. The poems in god’s breath hovering across the waters themselves hover, and also dart, full of the world, and full of alert, sometimes pugnacious private sorrow. Israeli’s vision is slant, arresting, and at times, almost out of nowhere, celebratory.”
—Daisy Fried
THE MOTHER’S SONG
The mother’s song is
the sound of the boot
compressing the snow
the sound of the bayonet
stabbing a bale of hay
the sound of a gunshot
behind the barn
the sound of a spade
edging into dry earth
the sound of a prayer
muttered by the doomed
penitent hiding behind
a curtain his mouth
taped shut his thumbs
cut off and a hole in
his throat through which
a thrush reaches out
a worm in its beak
blind and twisted
as an ampersand
a child practiced
over and over
in a black book
as punishment for
daring to imagine
the mother’s song
that’s written on torn
white wings from
the other side
of understanding
where everything
has a way of breathing
and everything
is as wondrous as
waking up in rags
on a forest floor
realizing that no one
survived not even
those who live—
Henry Israeli 
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