Disaster Relief (Flint, Michigan 2015)

Pharaoh’s magicians, you apprehend

too late that technical slights

and sleights-of-hand resolve nothing;

the techne you seek, the immense stillness

of negligence.

Conjurers, your hands

at rest give answer to Israel’s gestures

with the rust that makes our rivers bleed

J.L. Wall’s poetry, essays, and fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in America, Modern Age, Hollins Critic, Ordinary Times, Jewish Fiction.Net, and Baseball Prospectus—Wrigleyville. At the University of Michigan, he teaches and writes about modernism and Jewish American literature.

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