Moriel’s poems and essays have been published or are forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, Ayin Press, Barrelhouse, Colorado Review, the Common, Cutleaf Journal, Nashville Review, The New York Times, Paper Brigade Literary Magazine, The Paris Review’s Daily, Poetry Daily, Runner’s World, Zyzzyva, and elsewhere.

“‘none of it! none of it will last!’: The poetic exclamation point between irony and ecstatic death-consciousness”

(Published in the American Poetry Review, Jan/Feb 2023)

“This little, unevenly bifurcated mark—but a dot beneath a line—can play an outsized role in a work of literature, and is the subject of much scholarly and literary derision, often viewed as base, unsophisticated, cheap and loud. In keeping with this view, when wielded in contemporary English-language poetry, this mark is often deployed to signal the poet’s ironic gaze on a subject, and carries with it an undertone of derision, caricature and scorn. Less often, I think, is this punctuation mark celebrated in literary or scholarly settings for its potential poetic power as an ecstatic death-marker…”

“Outside Paddan Aram”

(Published in Barrelhouse Magazine, Fall 2021)

Savage we bombed our seven longboards

spewing severed rockshards towards self-

minding neighborhoods, left in our wake

carcasses of forsaken cheese sandwiches

“Magic, Memory and Mass Murder: New Shtetl Literature and the Long Backshadow of Genocide.”

(Published in Paper Brigade Literary Magazine, Volume 4, October 2020)

Art under­stands the pow­er of cat­a­stro­phe to obscure itself with its own mag­ni­tude: look direct­ly at the sun, and your expe­ri­ence will not be one of vision; the brighter the sun, and the more direct­ly you look, the less you will see. Mag­ic allows the read­er to instead glance at one of Isaac Bashe­vis Singer’s myr­i­ad dyb­buks, or hope that a shawl might have the pow­er to save a child’s life, as in Cyn­thia Ozick’s mas­ter­ful sto­ry. Mag­ic allows the read­er to ignore, if even just for a moment, the shad­ow of the sun of mass mur­der and geno­cide-yet-to-come that is cast on every aspect of Euro­pean Jew­ish his­to­ry. Per­haps it is through art that we can tru­ly expe­ri­ence all that exist­ed before cat­a­stro­phe — the time in which cat­a­stro­phe was only one of many pos­si­ble futures…

“The Golem Sonnets”

(Published in Paper Brigade Literary Magazine, Volume 5, December 2021, and online in PB Daily, March 2021).

We became more of a vegetarian people for a while,

and while that might have been good for our spleens,

it was not so good for our social mobility in White-

fish, Montana, where they lined us up in the streets.

“Goddamn”

(Published in The Common, July 2020)

The chunk of the ball
On the cracked blacktop
And our torsos so covered
In sweat nearby the sea

“Copyright” & “Memorial Sonnet”

(Published in Cutleaf, October 2021)

Everyone wrote “Footsteps,” or so they Claim, is the thing, except that actually              I did. It came to me one night in a dream, I mean, in a chatroom in my dream.

“Dybbuk, Goylem & Tzadik: Three Sonnets”

(Published in Ayin Press’s Holy Folio, Jan 2023)

It is for this that they keep us around:

For keening, for longing, for watching.

For dusting, for aching, for kindling.

“Wetland”

a collaboration with violinist and composter Zoë Aqua, and other artists:

“The Upside of Brandenburg v. Ohio”

(The Paris Review’s Daily, January 2020)

The first time I met an aspiring white supremacist was during a class trip to a county career center in southwest Ohio. He was tall and had buzzed hair and told my friend Niquelle and me that he loved the movie American History X.

“The Scholar and the Activist”

(Published in the Tel Aviv Review of Books, July 2020 )

There are two places.

In one place, “poetry ripens with the rice.” Red chilies dry on the roof, water buffalo wander the streets, a goddess is drawn from the mud. A bite of fresh mango is “a golden electrocution.” The heat is a “living, menacing being, roused, relentless, driven by its own autonomous moods.” A piglet on the run is “a streak of dark lightning.” There is a glut of dust and light…

“A Salamander”

(Published in The Common, July 2021)

Cute, I said bending over, a salam—
I swallowed the second half of the word

as my face drew nearer to the shiny body
and I saw the white oozing from its mouth, but

it was too late.

“Kobilnik” and other poems

(Published in the Jewish Book Council’s Berru Poetry Series, May 2020)

It is not much of a revelation

to the flow­ers how we kill and

tend bunch­es of river­sticks and

sweet lit­tle hats for the wheat!

the wheat! it writhes and wags

“Wetland”

(Published in The Common Magazine, April 2018)

Darkness, my sibling,
I have a story to tell you.

Last shabbes I was chased by the law into Bed
Stuy streets for passing out pamphlets
decrying America’s uncles.

“Nababta”

(Published in Colorado Review, Spring 2023; featured in Poetry Daily on August 12, 2023)

man in the camp

            yes it is a           camp

chubby man &

balding

            you smile…

“I Need My Blood,” by Itzik Feffer (Translation from Yiddish)

(Published in Jewish Currents Magazine, Winter 2022)

I send my greetings anew unto this day,

my blood is burning, as the sun burns on the way,

I will not lock my blood inside my heart,

neither will I shed my blood for naught

in the hot going of the common day.

“Pacifist”

(Published in ZYZZYVA Magazine, Winter 2018)

The other day a man I know

had his house stolen.

it felt like a step down from

murder.

On the Murder of Ahmaud Arbery

(Published in Runner’s World, May 18, 2020)

I  cannot stop thinking about Ahmaud Arbery. 

I find myself wondering if, as he set out for his run in late February, his knees were bothering him. Maybe his IT band was tight. Maybe he had a twinge in one of his calves. Or maybe it was one of those charmed, perfect runs in which every fiber of one’s body feels at ease, in which nothing hurts much, in which running is a sheer delight of forward motion, fresh air, sunlight, presentness, grace…

“Arrival of a Fridge”

(Published in the Yellow Springs News’ First Lines Column, February 2019)

This was their seventh delivery

not all of them fridges

but still.

“Jerusalem”

Published in IndieFeed and +972 Magazine, summer 2012

Jerusalem,

Your sidewalks are so soft they feel like used mattresses.

“Jerusalem Forest”

(Published in Deltona Howl Literary Magazine, August 2017)

I. Snarl

Many mornings my dog Silly
Department and I run for one
hour in the Jerusalem Forest.
 
Sometimes we encounter
other dogs and humans.
 
Silly is conflict averse.
(Let’s don’t talk about me quite yet)