a literary arts journal
the body wins another hand
Tikva Hecht
she/her
The kettle keens.
I want to write
the steam is all
hooked elbows
rainstorms which woke one day
in human form or humans
outmaneuvering an arid god.
It isn’t true. The steam
bobs upwards with all the aplomb
of inspecting angels
at the end of an eight-eon shift
​
slipping at last out of their wings.
It’s only us here now, patiently
in skin and sweat-stained
suffering — while what feeds us
burns and bubbles, while
what condenses on the range hood
watches with pupil-less eyes
like a child might have drawn
and not bothered to fill in —
dancing.
Tikva Hecht’s debut poetry collection, Tashlikh, was published by Ben Yehuda Press in September 2024. Her writing can be found in Canadian Literature, CV2, Grain Magazine, Modern Literature, and The Lehrhaus, among other publications. Tikva earned her MFA in creative writing from UC Riverside, and also holds an MA in philosophy from the New School for Social Research. You can learn more about Tikva at tikvahecht.com.