Looking forward while hearing you

You gotta live with the people in the madhouse you’re in
                                                        —Karen Alkalay-Gut

Michael Dickel

The voices speak poetry
or read it or analyze
its themes in honor
of a writer who
defiantly goes out,
writes a poem,
and tells the war-
makers to shoot
over her head.

A jazz singer plays
her words like
Tori Amos, alive
and full of their
import. So many
languages here.
English, of course.
Hebrew, absolutely.
Arabic, necessarily.
Spanish, surprisingly.

And outside the window
a dark hummingbird
refracting blue midnight
flits amid leafy trees
to the thin wire of a
roof railing that
will not keep us
from falling.