TOVLI SIMIRYAN
Recent Publications
Again, Jewish Women of Words has published Tovli's writings: A memoir entitled "The Poet Lets Go" is now live at
https://jewishwomenofwords.com.au
Jewish Women of Words
Have supported Tovli's writings since 2021.
Please visit
https://jewishwomenofwords.com.au
Kent State University has published an anthology entitled: Light Enters the Grove.
Tovli's poetry is included under FOREST...The Eastern Red-Backed Salamander.
An online version can be accessed at:
Eastern Red-backed Salamander - CVNP (travelingstanzas.com)
Tiferet Journal
(autumn- winter 2018)
has published
Skies...
a short story by Tovli
Aunt Lily...
A Prose Poem
will be appearing in Proem Journal
in mid 2020
https://proemjournal.wixsite.com/proem
Examples of recently published writings by Tovli
Yesterday
A haibun
My hands are empty. No weapon, not even a whistle. The twist in my pant-leg is imperceptible, like shifting sand; or so I pretend. The old man in the cemetery has no grave. He is crossing his legs. My new blouse is too big. I am empty and cannot fill space. Its billowed sleeves flap in the wind. Nothing is there, absolutely nothing above, nothing below. The yellow amber necklace brought from Lithuania hangs on a nail in the air someplace. There—an old house filled with dust is where I should be, empty, with nothing to protect. No money, clothes or friends; my ledger empty, footprints erased bone by bone. Nothing is left, not even yesterday. And yet, one final chance: the soft clouds of cotton balls, dampened, stuffed like ash to keep my mouth from calling out, caving in, so that during the eulogy nothing will sink into the earth before its time…
dampened cotton balls,
absorbing my memories,
no one is hoping.
Tovli Simiryan © 2014
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's 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 your bent face.
You with missing teeth.
The hollow darkness of an echo scratched on glass.
And still we are alive.
Tovli Simiryan (c) 2014
Wait
A haibun
I was waiting for you. So much time fled, our language flattered the dead like misguided noise. Not wanting to become worthless, I stopped talking. No. Not speechless, voiceless. It meant nothing. I am nothing. It’s not what you say, but how you sound. Never mind, the town is gone and a piece of each generation with it. Sunlight passed by a corner, its yellow trail of saliva spitting out a few grey clouds instead of dawn. So what? The soldier following us is connected to an oil stain on the ground. He knows what fails, so why keep hunting. Why look down. Later, the moon became your finger nail shining like a light. I waited. No one came. Someday, our memories will begin to rise and then converge. Right now, I don’t trust a leaking yellow sky; I don’t hear the sound of air breaking inside thoughts.
All over my face,
throughout my entire body
I await silence.
Tovli Simiryan (c) 2014