Michal Rubin's Home Visit is more than a book of poems-it is a demand, righteous and insistent, that we forge a better world. A daughter of Israel and a fierce critic of it, Rubin's poems linger on the details of Israeli occupation: demolished homes, brutalized old men, water-starved villages. Rubin refuses the easy platitudes, "the chanted words / of well- meaning protesters." Instead, she insists, "Words are steps on hot coals." Take it as a promise: these poems will burn away hypocrisy and willful ignorance. Take it as a warning: these poems will sear your heart.

-Toby Altman, author of Discipline Park

“They are filled, the tombs” Michal Rubin writes, as she chronicles her grief and rage during the first year of the current Gaza war. These poems are a eulogy for a dismantled fantasy, a foundation Rubin grew up with in Israel.  She exposes her helplessness with an intense directness that challenges her own privileged safety, while carrying on a tender poetic dialogue with Palestinian writings.

Home is a conflicted place of childhood, of becoming, of leaving, of longing, of loving, of wishing things were different. Michal Rubin grew up in Israel, fell in love with Israel, left Israel and wants the best for Israel, but she wants the best for her Palestinian neighbors, too. And Bones Stay Dry, is a small poignant volume of what was, what is and what could be. Walk with her through streets, among fruit trees, in the marketplace, in homes of the oppressed and the oppressor, harvesting war in fields of desolation. If you want to begin to understand the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, read these poems.

-Al Black, author of Man with Two Shadows