I and Thou

ISSUE: Winter 1973

How I hate you tonight!
I tick off
the bumps on your back,
your hangnails, the acid
smell of your sweat.
You corrode my skin.
Who let you in?
When did you grow that nose?
You changed your name.
Of course you’re to blame.
You don’t know me,
you don’t know me.

For your information, my toes
are rosebuds
of superior breeding.

Yours are tough,
discolored,
misshapen by shoes.

And how did you ever get
tobacco stains
on the bottoms of your feet?

The Princess
picked up the Little Green Frog
spotted ugh! all over
and threw it wham! just as
hard as she could
at the castle wall.

“Here’s your chance!”
she cried.
“Now become
a prince.”

Chana Bloch

Chana Bloch’s poetry and translations have appeared in the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, and the Nation, among other places. Her collections of poetry include Blood Honey (Autumn House, 2009), and she edited and translated Yehuda Amichai: The Selected Poetry (Harper & Row, 1986) with Stephen Mitchell. Her awards include the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and two Pushcart Prizes. Her translation, with Ariel Bloch, of The Song of Songs was named a Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year.