Poetry
Date Published: May 21, 2024
Publisher: Holy Cow! Press
A poet and female commander in the Israeli Defense Forces creates an
original perspective from the war-torn front lines of the Middle East
conflict.
The Dove That Didn’t Return tackles the canon of war poetry, an
almost exclusively male-penned body of poems. In the book, biblical stories,
verses, and fragments are rewritten through the eyes of a female lieutenant
in the Israeli Army. It is a contemporary poetics on the revelations of war
from an Israeli perspective never before told—a woman, and a soldier
at that.
This debut full-length collection follows upon the publication of her
critically acclaimed chapbook, Between Sanctity and Sand, from Finishing
Line Press.
EXCERPT
BETWEEN SANCTITY AND SAND
The first time I shot an M-16
it was the heat of summer in the Negev.
Gas-operated with a rotating bolt, five-point-fifty-
six caliber, with nineteen bullets a box.
I could shoot like an angel.
I could hit a running target
at six-hundred-fifty meters.
I hummed to myself as I shot,
I was eighteen.
The retama flower of my hair-bun drawn back tight
blooming, sprouting open with every green round.
About the Author
Yael S. Hacohen earned a Ph.D. at UC Berkeley. She has received
research/teaching fellowships from Tel Aviv University and Bar Ilan
University. She has an MFA in Poetry from New York University, where she was
an NYU Veterans Workshop Fellow, International Editor at Washington Square
Literary Review, and Editor-in-Chief at Nine Lines Literary Review. Her work has
been featured or is forthcoming in The Poetry Review, Ploughshares, The
Missouri Review, Bellevue Literary Review, LIT, Prairie Schooner, New York
Quarterly Magazine, Colorado Review, and many more. Hacohen published her chapbook Between Sanctity and Sand with Finishing
Line Press in 2021. Hacohen served as a lieutenant in the 162nd Armored
Division of the Israeli Defense Forces. She lives with her family in Tel
Aviv, Israel.
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