Post-weekend Poetry 122: Hardly Feeling by Tovli Simiryan

Welcome to Post-weekend Poetry and the one hundred and twenty-second poem in this series. This week’s piece is by Tovli Simiryan.

Hardly Feeling

“For evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing.”
Simon Wiesenthal

A charcoal face left in the coffee-house window.
It’s a moment of broken eyes,
apathy spilling like a cascade of icy rivers
forced into one final ocean.
We don’t cry anymore. The trade off?
All disturbance is unifying, like sunlight falling inside rain,
pouring through our eyes until the dust around our shoulders feels wet.
It becomes the point where we disappear,
as if smoke is all we’re good for,
this time rising through three little clouds instead of a chimney,
dissolving and never coming back.
An infinite number of stones have covered this grave.
Nevertheless, we find ourselves living from silence.
Our consolation?
You with a bent face.
You with missing teeth.
The hollow darkness of an echo scratched on glass.

And still we are alive.

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© Tovli Simiryan 2014—L’kovid Eyal, Gilad, Naftali—z”l

I asked Tovli what prompted this piece and she said…

Inspiration for “Hardly Feeling” came from talking to friends regarding the loss of the three Israeli students in June 2014.

Thank you, Tovli.

Tovli Simiryan is a writer and poet living in Northeast Ohio with her husband, Yosif. Her short stories, essays and poetry have appeared in a variety of publications, including Conversations, 6S, Raving Dove, Future Cycle, Jewish Magazine, Chabad Magazine and Browsing Corner. She has published two volumes of poetry and a collection of short stories.   Her website is http://tovlishumblehabitat.org and you can contact her at tovli102@outlook.com.

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If you’d like to submit your poem (60 lines max) for consideration for Post-weekend Poetry take a look here or a poem for critique on the Online Poetry Writing Group (link below).

Related articles:

• http://jerz.setonhill.edu/writing/creative1/poetry-writing-tips-how-to-write-a-poem
• http://voices.yahoo.com/5-tips-writing-better-poetry-jumpstart-504563.html?cat=38
• http://www.marilynsinger.net/first/poetrytips.htm
• http://www.poewar.com/poetry-writing-tips
• http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Poem
• http://www.writersdigest.com/writing-articles/by-writing-genre/poetry
• http://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2013/jul/24/hannah-lowe-top-10-poetry-tips
• http://www.newpoetspress.com/writetips.html
• http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/writing-poetry.html
• and from this blog, advice from Alice Shapiro, Angelita Williams, Cendrine Marrouat, John J Hohn, Kerry Hammerton, Phillip Ellis.

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