Chaim ben Avram

mend

I’m told the most efficient method
to mend wounds is also the slowest.

I have all the time in the world to ask
why parts of the universe stay

broken—the desert, my mother,
the faucet on her bathroom sink.

Then there’s the guy in the dog park
who sits apart from everyone.

He’d stab his shadow if it moved any closer.
I have all the time in the world to watch

darkness bleed. I’ve tended my father’s scabs
of sweated-out formaldehyde.

The parts of his body that chose to break
break down in me.

Not just connective tissue, but consciousness trying to pass
for the shapes words take in my mouth.

I want to fix my mother’s sink before it leaks.
I want to replace my universe.

Not that I’m short on theories
or parts crying out for alignment.

It’s that I have all the time in the world to heal myself.

rule of thirds

Human infants do not fear
snakes. Once, God existed.
He did not orchestrate; He
wept like the bones of time
impaling sky, weeping days,
then drying cedar scales in the pages of a body
that had built shelves in itself—entire journals
written endless bleat. My mother executes her
photography late in life:
Screenshot the internet.
Crop the frame. Mystify
edges. Keep magnifying.
Ignore the velocity
at which the world blurs. I’m studying
madness, injecting shadows in my eyes
which shine.

Chaim ben Avram’s poetry appears in Image Journal, Oxford Poetry, Denver Quarterly, Ilanot Review, West Branch, Tin House, and others. His debut book, Spiral Jetty: A Novel, is due out from 7.13 Books in 2027.