Nightfall in Israel

Holes pock the West Bank wall
where men and boys walk
past AK-47s on the hips
of teenage soldiers to lunge
15 vertical feet to jobs or
familial embraces.

Three hours after the fifth cry for prayer
crackles electric, showers run
dry in Arab neighborhoods
and some forget how the sky bruised red
and darkened like she’d been beaten with
a desperate fist.

A version of this poem first appeared in riverrun vol. 47.