LatinosUSA

Jonathan Vidgop is a theatre director, author, screenwriter, and founder of the
«Am haZikaron» Institute for Science, Culture and Heritage of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv. Born in Leningrad in 1955, he was expelled in 1974 from university ‘for behavior unworthy of a Soviet student.’ His work earned a presidential grant, and “Nomads” won Meridian’s Editors’ Prize in Prose; his writing appears in NLO, Los Angeles Review, Pembroke.

Meat (translated by Leo Shtutin, published by the Italian Literary Magazine Open Doors Review in Dec 2024)

Meat

butcher cleft 

scarlet

blood-brim

slaughter-warm

live-fine-filamentous

Butcher-executioner

solemn air

razor-sharp blade

surgical cut

disassemble breathing flesh 

Customer

blood orgy witness   

breath bate anticipate 

sink teeth

hunk juice underdone

Queue   

eyes rivet all

torment quiver      

still-warm slab

butcher-shop execution rite  

another witness furtive

Me

boy of five

tiptoe stretch counter

chin uptilt transfix

dream

be butcher  

dream

blade sink

fragile tender flank  

meat alone rite no part

no sacrificial role

suffer not dream not transfix not

meat long dead

feel not.

Some questions

• Do you think poetry is back in fashion?

Yes.

• Do you write poetry daily, or do you write as ideas come to you?

As ideas come to me.

• What is your next publishing project? Could you tell us how it came about?

The next publishing project is my novel “Testimony” in English that has been recently accepted by Interactive Publications Pty Ltd. It came about after Distinguished Professor Jen Webb accepted my poem to Australian “Meniscus” and recommended this publishing house as a possible home for this work.

• The city you live in, and a description of your favorite bar or café.

Tel-Aviv. The Café

This diminutive café, a vintage affair nestled among boulevards and gnarly streets, is awash with the aroma of coffee and the scent of the Mediterranean Sea. Founded by émigrés from Europe, and infused with a sense of freedom and frivolity, it sits against the backdrop of several mosques, and boasts a blend of diverse European styles, from Warsaw coffee spots to Parisian bistros. As regulars will tell you, it exudes the devil-may-care spirit of Marseille and the chutzpah of Odesa. Throw in a little light Viennese music, and suddenly you feel right at home in this typical Tel Aviv café, sited in the very heart of the city with its strange styles, habits, fashions, Pride parades, Purim carnivals, fierce political demonstrations, synagogues, outskirts bazaars, beaches, French Riviera-style promenades, American hotels, skyscrapers, and denizens hailing from every corner of the globe—denizens who stroll past this café twenty-four hours a day, relishing the aroma of freedom.