My Woven Kipa

by Maxim D. Shrayer

I bought my kipa
from an old mystic
who spends his days
at Shuk HaKarmel.

My kipa is woven
from many strands:
black like memory
of the 9th of Av,
blue like the eyes of
murdered Litvak maidens,
white like the linen shroud
I will wear to my burial,
coarse like salt
from the Dead Sea,
soft like sand of the Negev,
silken like milk
of Bedouin camels.

My best childhood friend
from Moscow,
who lives north of Tel Aviv
in a rickety building
without a bomb shelter,
told me, “You’ve become
a religious Zionist,”
when we spoke
two or three days
after the Hamas attack
and I was seething
with useless words
of righteous rage.

I didn’t want to argue.
My friend stood in the landing
by the window. Missiles were
flying across his phone screen.

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Maxim D. Shrayer is a bilingual author and a professor at Boston College. He was born in Moscow and emigrated in 1987. His recent books include A Russian Immigrant: Three Novellas and Immigrant Baggage, a memoir. Shrayer’s new collection of poetry, Kinship, is forthcoming in April 2024 from Finishing Line Press.