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RITA KOGAN

Translated from Hebrew by Alex Moshkin and zachary sholem berger

I won’t know what was here before.
I don’t know what’s here today.
Just thick strands of the spiderweb
Sticking to each other, and to me
In place of reality.

I didn’t know who Inbal Perlmutter was
When she died
Or why everyone was in mourning.
I didn’t know who Yitzchak Rabin was
When he was killed
Or why everyone was in mourning.

I knew how to draw red lines
With a Japanese knife
On the insides of my arms.
I knew how to take ecstasy,
And fly over the Jordan River.
But whenever I landed
I split open
A hand
Or a wing

Rita Kogan was born in Saint Petersburg in 1976. She immigrated to Israel in 1990 and is currently living in Tel Aviv. Kogan is a poet, translator, and writer, producing original verse and prose in Hebrew and translations from her native Russian. She produced two books of poems, A License to Misspell (2015) and A Horse in a Skirt (2018). Her writings have been published in the leading literary journals in Israel, including Ho!, Moznaim, Iton 77, Carmel, Maayan, Granta, and Maaboret. Kogan’s first book of prose, Stone Land, was published in 2021. Her third poetry book, Mal de Debarquement Syndrome, is forthcoming in 2022.

Alex Moshkin is a fellow at the Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan and an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Koc University in Istanbul. Born in Russia, Moshkin has lived in Israel from the age of 12 to 19, and is currently completing a monograph on Russian-speaking Jews in Israel. In addition to the collaborative translations with Berger noted above, he has translated a number of Russian Israeli poets including Alex Rif.

Zackary Sholem Berger is a poet and translator in Baltimore, Maryland, working in Hebrew, Yiddish, and English. His own multilingual poetry has appeared in a number of venues. His recent translation of the Yiddish-language fictions of Avrom Sutzkever appeared in 2020 from White Goat Press.