BAI TASHCHIT (DO NOT DESTROY)

by Lenore Weiss

Israeli settlers and soldiers killed three Palestinians in their village near Ramallah on Saturday night, the third deadly attack in a week of surging Israeli violence across the occupied West Bank. Israeli settlers have shot dead five civilians during invasions of Palestinian olive groves, villages and grazing land, in the brief period since Israel and the US launched a new war on Iran at the end of February. —The Guardian, March 8, 2026. Photo: WAFA archive.

Deer bite off the heads of my coreopsis, yellow sunbursts of blossoms I was hoping to see every morning outside my window, but now only sad stumps are left leaning against the pavement. Every day, I go outside to encourage the plant, hoping it might grow back, sprout a few new leaves. The way olive trees are being cut, burned and poisoned, and the olive, which is more than a fruit, a symbol of resistance, buckets picked and pressed with a wooden beam, sometimes with a stone to produce golden flowing oil. Every tree which is not being harvested, is lost to the occupation. Deuteronomy 20:19-20 prohibits cutting down fruit-bearing trees during a war as they provide life-sustaining food. Isn’t this an ongoing war? Olive trees growing in the West Bank are the first to go, surrounded by settlements built high on ridges that strangle villages, and even when armed renegades desist, they return with more venom. Concentration camps and the multitude of prisons throughout the United States produce men and women who understand how physical space can be controlled, minds never. Villagers living in Burin say their olive oil is spicier because it is laced with tear gas.

Lenore Weiss’s novel Pulp into Paper and a poetry collection, Video Game Pointers were both published in 2024. Prior poetry collections form a trilogy about love, loss, and being mortal: Cutting Down the Last Tree on Easter Island (West End Press, 2012), Two Places (Kelsay Books, 2014), and The Golem (Hakodesh Word Press, 2017). Alexandria Quarterly Press published her prize-winning flash fiction chapbook Holding on to the Fringes of Love. Lenore edited a poetry and prose anthology for Kehilla Community Synagogue entitled From the Well of Living Waters: Voices of the 21st Century. She is a member the Writers Grotto and serves as the Associate Creative Nonfiction (CNF) Editor for the Mud Season Review.

NEW BEGINNING IN ISRAEL

by Lenore Weiss

Menachem Begin (Mark Reinstein/Getty Images)

Menachem Begin was Dodo’s first cousin.
She and my mother were best friends.
Dodo lived on the ground floor.
We lived on the other side of the apartment building.
Sometimes I babysat her dog Cocoa who pooped
on the living room rug before she returned home
from vacationing in Israel where she drank coffee
with her cousin, the same Menachem Begin.

Dodo’s mother was Mrs. Bagoon who lived
under the elevated near Southern Boulevard
and painted her veins purple with Gentian Violet
wearing support stockings that made her feet sweat.
Her brother was Menachem’s son
whose family came from Russia, and as far as I knew,
Israel was a collection basket for the poor and huddled masses
all yearning. Sharon, from third-grade, went to Israel
with her mother every summer to plant a tree
in her father’s memory, and Aunt Clara sent money
through her women’s organization.

I never remember my mother or father
sending money to Israel even though Menachem Begin
was Dodo’s first cousin, but they did send me
to a Zionist sleep-away camp
because that’s where Dodo sent her daughter
who really liked it. My father didn’t talk much
about Israel, at least not in English, or about the family
he’d lost in Hungary, but made it clear
he didn't think Zionism was the same winning ticket
others hoped for, not the same
new beginning for the Jewish people
even though Menachem’s
last name was spelled like that.

Lenore Weiss serves as the Associate Creative Nonfiction (CNF) Editor for the Mud Season Review and lives in Oakland, California with Zebra the Brave and Granola the Shy. Her environmental novel Pulp into Paper is forthcoming from Atmosphere Press as is a new poetry collection, Video Game Pointers from WordTech Communications.

FROM THE LOWER DEPTHS

by Lenore Weiss

Left: Tom and his dog Winter take a moment as they hang out at his friend's camp site near 5th and Market streets on Tuesday, May 30, 2017, in Oakland, Calif. Tom's camp is across the street. Photo: Santiago Mejia, The Chronicle. Right: OMCA Dorothea Lange Photo Exhibit: The Politics of Seeing.

for Dorothea Lange

1.
A living room in the street
beneath the freeway
where a dog barks 24/7
tied to a clothes line
a sawhorse corralled
near a barbecue pit
pallets and bedspreads
rescued from last year’s
construction site
a chair missing one arm
but still good enough
to relax
on a summer’s evening
and listen to the sound
of commuter traffic.

2.
He said he used to be
a Shakespearean actor
tall with broad shoulders
salt and pepper hair
people in the audience
used to call him
dignified
now he's missing
most of his front teeth
couldn’t understand
everything he said
about a stage
how he wanted to build it
beneath the overpass.

3.
Dorothea Lange showing
at the Oakland Museum
Dust Bowl photos
how engineers dammed
Lake Berryessa.
If she were alive today
I bet she’d open her wallet
show him pictures of her kids,
explain where she grew up,
went to school,
what she did for a living
then quietly ask
if she could take pictures
of him in his living room
Just sit in that chair, 
she’d say, it’ll do fine . . .
she might even ask him to recite
a scene from Hamlet, or better yet,
get the actor to introduce her
to his friends
let us see
what it is we won't.

Lenore Weiss is an MFA candidate at San Francisco State University where she is also a teaching assistant. Winner of the Clark-Gross Award and the Robert Browning Dramatic Monologue contest, her poetry has been published in many journals. Books include Cutting Down the Last Tree on Easter Island (West End Press, 2012) Two Places (Kelsay Books, 2014), and The Golem (Hadassa Word Press, 2017).