1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
Click below for Competition
results for 
2004
2005
2006

2007

Contents

• Indulgence              by    Mark L. Levinson, Tel Aviv
• red wine                 by    Jean Kadmon, Jerusalem
• Sea 2000                by    Lilian Cohen,  a Haifa choice
• The Homeless         by    Isaac Cohen, Bnei - Brak  
• To Beethoven         by    Thilde Fox, Haifa
• Desert Wind            by    Bernice Singer,       Haifa  selection

INDULGENCE    by    Mark L. Levinson, Tel Aviv

On Friday afternoons there drifts a savor down the street
of everything the doctor has forbidden me to eat.
My neighbor Mr. Horowitz is barbecuing lamb.
His wife is baking butter cookies navellized with jam.
The Kleins are frying something sweet they fancy is Chinese.
The Zarrs are eating pizza while their cholent seethes in grease.
There’s chocolate and coffee and there’s chicken-liver paste.
And what am I? Not covetous. no craving for a taste.
I only wish that someone had been with me to divulge,
when I was young, that someday I’d be ceasing to indulge.
And so I tell my son, when he’s inclined to gourmandize,
"I hope that you appreciate those burgers, shakes and fries.
Today your belly’s wiry and your arteries are mellow.
To stay that way at my age, plan on tofu, toast and jello."
His youth’s a fleeting pleasure that I’m trying to enhance.
if he would eat outside his room, I’d have a better chance.

Go To Top      Go To Home Page

in red wine    by    Jean Kadmon, Jerusalem

gesturing from our picnic bench,
across depth of Eocene valleys
to the Holy City with gold dome
gold onions and above it all
the university radar tower,
we toasted Darwin in red wine.

On the flint ridge behind us were
axes and scrapers of Paleolithic hunters
and terraces where David,
when a lad, might have piped
his sheep and goats.

the wine, fossils and flint tools
worked gold, scholars, radar, sheep
and David’s poetry all came out of
selected cellular activity,
of creature vitality.

Go To Top      Go To Home Page

Sea 2000    by    Lilian Cohen,  a Haifa choice

She frills the shore
with lace-patterned shells,
frolics with swimmers,
cradles her fish
encrusted in shrouds,
weeps.

Go To Top      Go To Home Page


The homeless     by    Isaac Cohen, Bnei - Brak

The homeless builds a home
with nickel and dimes
bypassers cast.

Home is in the dark
for hope is long gone.

Go To Top      Go To Home Page

TO BEETHOVEN    by    Thilde Fox, Haifa

Where do the notes live before you catch them?

Do they hide behind the skies
till you pluck them down and toss them out
like catherine wheels bursting into sound?

Do you marshal them in sober rows
obedient to your pen,
till they rise like shooting stars
with trails of music singing for ever through the heavens
till God gathers them in and sends them back for His delight?

When you put away your pages
do they storm your pillow
and tease your sleep
till you wake enchanted
and sing again?

Go To Top      Go To Home Page

Hamsin*                   by    Bernice Singer,       Haifa  selection
                                 *Hamsin= hot desert wind from the East
The hamsin has us in its claws.
Anxiously, I watch my tender seedlings,
once so full of summer’s promise - -

while their lusty older brothers,
safe in the shade, shame them.
Yet still I watch,

hoping their death will not follow
their afterbirth.   O Mama,  Daddy - -
how happy I am

that the seed you once planted,
bearing fatality from its inception
will end up, unknown to you,

in the dust.

Go To Top      Go To Home Page