[A response to A. R. Ammons’ "In Memoriam Mae Noblitt"]

There’s no such thing as "just a place": some walk deserts, coil in

the tanks of trucks, tear themselves under fences, looking for a just place

as if there were such a thing as justice: still, we are the place that made us,

low-slung limbs if there were trees, the climb if there were mountains:

if we are brown, we are the sun that browned us, the clipper if we’re cold.

* 

Judging Elijah

1.

At Rosh Hashana dinner, all talk is of the coming of Elijah.

Elijah Josiah or Josiah Elijah, my brother tells me they will call my nephew. I think he is kidding and laugh. He places proud hands on his girlfriend’s belly. I conjure a t-shirt, Messiah on board.

2.

Last summer in Maine, my wife and I saw Josiahs everywhere. Apparently a number of them built Ogunquit. We will call the dog, when our hypothetical kids ask for one, Josiah Treehorn.

3.

My brother is a crack addict. Will that make his baby a crack baby? Will that make me a crack aunt?

4.

My parents tell me the name now is Elijah Star so he will have his father’s initials.

What must it be like, to think you bear repeating?

*

Jessica Reed‘s poetry has appeared in The Paris Review, Tin House, LIT, and The Huffington Post, and is forthcoming in the anthology Satellite Convulsions: Poems from Tin House. She is the 2007 recipient of the Marie Ponsot Poetry Prize and the Jerome Lowell Dejur Award. Originally from Asheville, North Carolina, she lives in New York City, where she spends M-F/9-5 as a technical writer and where she received her MFA from the the City College of the City University of New York.

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After he takes out his silver clip of 20 sawbucks and tosses it on the table, my father snoozes on the couch, dreams made of Scotch.

My mother slaps the iron with her palm to hear it hiss, presses his white shirts. "He’s tired," she says, "leave him be."

Then she sips black coffee as she watches the stove. the soup boiling on the burner, lid shaking and shimmying.

I put my hand on my father’s forehead, the dark clouds of stubble and sweat under his eyelids like the smell of wet leaves.

Acorns drop on his new Buick. Automatic car windows go up and down. Sycamores open their leaves,

I step inside my father’s dream and listen: "We’ll be so rich we’ll live in a hotel, we’ll be so rich…"

Hagar

I was beauty, leading you down into a secret canal, your arms rowing toward me.

She was the mirror where you imagined a kingdom, the treacherous face, the eyes that claimed you.

I passed through at night, a long kiss, a shiver. She held you, a locked jaw, a knock in the ribs, gnashing teeth,

bitter lips, the call to come now, as jackals circled the fires. I knelt at a dry well. She knelt at your feet,

urging you to lie down, to try again. Above, tribes of stars waited. Dust took my hand, whispered to me.

She was a wound bleeding into your hands. My son roamed the desert, aimed

his arrows, killing what he could. Her son died a thousand times. She wanted the future. I wanted you.

– – –

Iraq

"The Way Forward…"

Today Abel had a question for God: Did he need to speak for God to hear him? He fell in the streets of Baghdad, his body torn apart. Today Cain lifted his head in prayer. This time God would accept his offering, the smell of charred flesh sweetening the air of heaven. He raised his fist, declared a victory for the fallen.

*

Jeff Friedman’s fourth collection of poetry, Black Threads, has recently been published by Carnegie Mellon University Press. His poems and translations have appeared in many literary magazines, including American Poetry Review, Poetry, 5 AM, New England Review, Literary Imagination, Agni Online, North American Review, Great River Review, Maggid, and The New Republic. He is a core faculty member in the M.F.A. program in Poetry Writing at New England College.

Art: Ur House of Abrahamby The Outback Traveler.

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But when a black hole puckers time and space, all will fall into its influence. I fell, deep through earth’s center and came out rising on the other side to portion out earth’s crops.

Pharaoh told me his dream: the cows that gave no milk, but kept eating each other over and over like Egypt’s snake with the tail in its mouth.

My pit is the mouth that eats me over and over in every generation as the earth eats the sun every night and spits it out in the morning, as the moon is eaten bite by bite and gathers itself back.

—

Courtney Druz is a Jewish poet, mother, and former architect now living in New Jersey. Her poems have most recently appeared in Entelechy: Mind & Culture and The Other Journal.

The post Joseph Explains appeared first on Jewcy.

2.

Who is he who paralyzes me

Who is he who kicks me

Who is he

Who transforms me

Who fascinates me

Who raises me

Who escorts me with congenial threats

Who scratches my back

Who slinks into me

Who hurts my orifices

Who’s waiting who’s leaving

Who grows in my belly

Whose head

Whose feet

Whose hands

Whence his soul his dream

3.

Infinite sweetness in your gray eyes

Oceana Oceana

A sense of neglect in your gray eyes

A sense of infinite solemnity

Oceana Oceana 

A sense of a smiling infinite

A sense of immeasurable wonder

Oceana

A sense of impending shuddering sobbing

A sense of the flat Chinese tree outside in light

Across the room

A sense of a thrilled awakening

Of a starved puppy

Oceana Oceana

4.

When were there words

When did words lie down to rest

When were words exploited

When were they spoken with such indifference

When did I stop traveling with them

When were the words speechless

When did they fail

5.

I talk about myself in generalities

I talk about myself in riddles

I talk about myself in visions;

what am I saying when I talk about myself

see myself in rambling questions

hanging from tall branches

in vocal scales

I talk about myself

in lows and highs

high-pitched and soft

blunt and pointed

I talk about myself as unassuming

I take public transportation

during regular hours;

sometimes, I talk about herself-

the star lady

the unruly lady

when I talk about herself I put on her spirit

shut myself in her speech

when I talk about herself

she’s enveloped in light.

I’m back talking about myself in generalities

in silly deeds and frivolities

I talk about myself

and lose my grip

how to talk about myself

6.

Boredom is a kind of pain

and free will;

boredom is a kind of body

boredom is a kind of fabric

boredom is a kind of tension on a couch

the kind of tension that has corroded

boredom is a kind of lie

a breezy summer wrap

boredom is a kind of time

boredom is a figure of speech:

I’m bored-

your presence is a kind of boredom

a boredom of no shape

standing stark naked

boredom is blurry-eyed

a roving boredom

boredom is a kind of somberness

7.

Racket

for Dorit  

Life racket, sickness racket

happy racket sad racket

spring racket

winter racket

what a racket in me

a racket of the particular and the vague

a thing wasteful and agreeable

the racket of travel and the racket of love

the racket of weakness or the racket of strength

the racket of brightness and the racket of darkness

the racket of meetings

the racket of longing for distances and fears

and the racket of children blurs them all;

the racket of kisses covers me all over

the racket of festivities the racket of movement

and listening to the racket of speech

[1] From a 10-poem cycle

*

Bios

Maya Bejerano holds a B.A. in Literature and Philosophy from Bar-Ilan University, and an M.A. in Library Sciences from Hebrew University. A major poet in Israel and considered by many a national treasure, Bejerano has published ten volumes of poetry, and her collected poems, Frequencies, appeared in 2005.  Her poems have been set to music, and her work has been translated into Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Polish, Romanian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, and Vietnamese. She has participated in numerous international poetry festivals, and is the recipient of, among others, the Prime Minister Award, the Bernstein Award, and the Bialik Award. Her work has appeared in several anthologies, and is forthcoming in the anthology, Poets on the Edge – Contemporary Hebrew Poetry (SUNY Press, 2008). A selection of her poems in translation The Hymns of Job and Other Poems was recently published by BOA Editions.

Translator

Tsipi Keller was born in Prague, raised in Israel, and has been living in the U.S. since 1974. She is the recipient of several literary awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship, CAPS and NYFA awards in fiction, and an Armand G. Erpf award from Columbia University. Her translation of Dan Pagis’s posthumous collection Last Poems was published by The Quarterly Review of Literature (1993), and her translation of Irit Katzir’s posthumous collection And I Wrote Poems was published by Carmel (2000). Keller’s most recently published books are Poets on the Edge – Contemporary Hebrew Poetry (SUNY Press); Maya Bejerano’s The Hymns of Job and Other Poems (BOA Editions).

All images from artist Joel Tauber’s  Searching For The Impossible: The Flying Project

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Jeremiah at the Outlet Mall 

Even the parking lot is a three day walk across,

where a man named Harold Hillman

has painted his initials around the shadows of the cars.

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH 

Behold!  Only he has left his mark on this wilderness.

All else is asphalt and fiberglass. 

Behold the pyramid of linens!

Behold the bushel of spoons!

Yea, I have not seen such riches since yesterday. 

How can we know ourselves in this Nike cookie sheet?

The East is the same as the West.

The North is the same as Sheol. 

I care not for your discount clearance sale, says the Lord.

I scoff at your makeshift markdowns. 

Show me the hand that wove the fiber

and I will bless you and your auction house. 

Introduce me to the underdressed pressers,

and to the boys who stick pins in shirts

while waiting for their overdue mothers. 

Who will appease them?  Where will they park? 

Their lot will not be evenly delineated,

nor will it contain lamppost night lighting, 

yet I believe we will see their glory at our feet,

and around our necks,

before this concrete plate gives birth to righteousness. *

Redemption of the Field at Broadway and 163rd 

Cousin, this is my ancestral square. 

My hapless forefathers tilled it

from the time of the good judges.   

You have been a worthy caretaker,

indeed a fine custodian

protecting the soil with this slab of cement

and dressing it with your coat and bags –   

yea you have erected a shelter on this land,

a sukkah of cardboard grapefruit cartons. 

But though you have tended it well,

I have returned from my sojourn in the West

and I will redeem this plot again for my use.

Do not protest and risk the wrath of this bandage.

Fear not for a fair price.  I’ve got a slew of nickels. 

I will claim my right of inheritance,

my field of concrete, my little kingdom. 

And I will build a house to house my house.

See, I have seed and a child’s spork

to till the dormant soil. 

There will be zucchini on the roadway.

This plot will bloom again. These two poems are from Adam Sol’s recently published book Jeremiah, Ohio (House of Anansi Press, 2008). Adam Sol is the author of two other collections of poetry, Jonah’s Promise, which won Mid-List Press’s First Series Award for Poetry, and Crowd of Sounds, which won the Trillium Award for Poetry. He is also the author of numerous essays and reviews, and teaches English at the Laurentian University at Georgian College Program.

Images by Yvette Drury Dubinsky

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What time capsule can I drop here for our baby son

who laughs in a February rainstorm in the arms

of a woman who speaks no language I know,

who leads us through a copse of cypresses in the dark,

to our cabin where we will lay our son in a white crib

and I will lay awake, wondering where to bury a note

for him to find here when he is grown?  

The next day a film crew arrives, just back with footage from Bosnia.

They walk silently on the grounds like monks. Over cheese blintzes,

oranges, and coffee, someone uses the word brave and I wonder

if the word is meant for us because we are at the beginning of raising

a child, or for them, because they dodged bullets in Sarajevo. 

That war is ended, the baby is grown, the old woman died, the crew moved on.  

Answer:  

February rains, cypress trees, blintzes, oranges, coffee.

Another war, always. And your question, because

every winter, someone arrives here with a baby, asking the same one.

*

Buying In 

Your son asks which is stronger:

diamonds or titanium,

and you deliberate

stone versus metal,

rock, paper, scissors,

and then your husband says

God is stronger than anything

and you go for broke and say,

faith trumps them all.

You are sitting around

the Shabbat table

and this is your life.

You can still remember

your Saturday morning

Italian class at Zabar’s:

mi porti un espresso

e un gelato per mio figlio

your voice rising

in the morning light.

*

Amy Gottlieb‘s short stories, essays, and poetry have appeared in Lilith, Forward, Puerto del Sol, Other Voices, Nashim, PresenTense, and elsewhere. She is an Arts Fellow at Drisha Institute of Jewish Education and the recipient of a 2008 BRIO award for poetry from Bronx Council on the Arts.

In The Land of Flowers Some Thing Stirs and Glowers and Banana Republic by Eileen Weitzman

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What law and power has blessed me so that in this provocation of flesh I have been wedded to gentleness?

–

Delicacy of an intricate mesh of our thought and meals and talking has brought me to this exaltation

of syllables and a speechlessness- to December dusk, and desk, and skin in the amber of our listening.

–

Dawn again pink with munificence; heart again blurred by its ignorance: toward you in that equation I turn-

and you, in turn, involve our being spun like wool from which soul is weaving a use for that useless opulence.

–

Doing and making-the end served by what it is we make, and what we do, is what has made me: making and you.

Homage To Agnes

Now I am spinning and turn to her of the mild mind whose lines extend quietly out from God-knows-where and into the picture we see in color before us, however pale.
The lines continue from that square and into the world we sometimes notice when we’re there- the thinnest of reddish filaments like a band-aid’s string running through it, or calming strips of manila and beige.

Its grid, it seems to me, is true, and her straightest lines amaze.

The Rain

The rain coming down in winter when I was younger- say-by twenty years, hit the stones in what seemed then like a sexual manner, as though its cold ran through my bones.

Now, the room is warmer, and my bones, too, are no longer what they were-or even, in places, my own. The inner seems both less and more within, and the moments are hours in which what was and is is sewn.

Something More

I hadn’t noticed for a decade and then there it was, soaring- the date-palm like an asterisk high in the pale-blue powdery air over the walls of the centuries’ city,

implying a kind of (long-lost) commentary beneath the print of that day’s page or tucked at the back of a certain chapter, if one would ever get there. But what (in the world) was it trying to say,

I wondered. For it wouldn’t go away long after I’d left it behind, and wandered home. It floated still inside my thinking, as though that, too, were that thing bespeaking both itself and something more, to come, and which had just been before. Such was life with an asterisk, hovering over it like a palm.

The Ghazal of What Hurt

Pain froze you, for years-and fear-leaving scars. But now, as though miraculously, it seems, here you are

walking easily across the ground, and into town as though you were floating on air, which in part you are,

or riding a wave of what feels like the world’s good will- though helped along by something foreign and older than you are

and yet much younger too, inside you, and so palpable an X-ray, you’re sure, would show it, within the body you are,

not all that far beneath the skin, and even in some bones. Making you wonder: Are you what you are-

with all that isn’t actually you having flowed through and settled in you, and made you what you are?

The pain was never replaced, nor was it quite erased. It’s memory now-so you know just how lucky you are.

You didn’t always. Were you then? And where’s the fear? Inside your words, like an engine? The car you are?!

Face it, friend, you most exist when you’re driven away, or on-by forms and forces greater than you are.

Peter Cole is the author of three books of poems, recently reissued as What Is Doubled: Poems1981–1998; a new collection, Things on Which I’ve Stumbled, from which these poems are taken, was published in Fall 2008 by New Directions. His many volumes of translations from Hebrew and Arabic include The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950–1492 and So What: New & Selected Poems, by Taha Muhammad Ali. Cole, who lives in Jerusalem and co-edits Ibis Editions, has received numerous honors for his work, including the PEN Translation Prize, and fellowships from the NEA, the NEH, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. In 2007 he was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow.

All images by Dani Kantrowitz.

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When God intrudes from within A story, as in the ordering Of unleavened bread, bitter Herbs, and the roasted lamb, When God’s telling-about the Seder Delays the Angel of Death And preserves a memory, we Are not free and free: In transience of turning, Like the force at which a body Can rise no higher, at which It momentarily Resists before falling Into song later on. There’s A resolving layeredness In Dayeinu, "It would have been Enough," repeating Die-die-einu Each turn at Passover season, As if this refrain orders Our gratitude to God For saving us once Again, as if this ending Needs to be kept up.

Robert Manaster has published poetry in various journals including Many Mountains Moving, Judaism, International Poetry Review, Image: A Journal of the Arts and Religion, Kerem, European Judaism and The Literary Review. Recently, he was chosen as the recipient of the Dorothy Norton Clay Poetry Fellowship for the Mary Anderson Center.

All images by Jamie Solock

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To be a we, we must include that which we have banished– the transgressor, the excommunicated. Can be neither community or person without our ex–punged, tracted parts down to the smallest part must not be buried without the least drop, even if by violence we died, scraped mopped absorbed collected by the dedicated blessed friends. This day, each portion of our confession comes to a portion of the body that has gone astray–errors of the hand the heart the mouth the eye. Before bed, a slow exercise imagining to sleep each contiguous part and part and part till the whole body is offered within the dark sleep of a great fish and spat out where the sea transgresses the littoral, where the shore connects water and land.

Meditation in a Bright Room

Haste is the enemy. When. In the night’s damp hollow, your hands articulating flesh, layer by serried layer. Haste is the enemy. Will. Hold it silent in the mouth each salt grain meeting its bud’s receptor. Haste is the enemy. I. Know that most of a day is the sitting still, the patient’s patience. Haste is the enemy. See. Thumbs thread the cervical vertebrae, thoracic, lumbar, two, three, four. Sacrum. Coccyx. Haste is the enemy. You. Name the names I can’t name, find the birds in the low bush, their shy pink answer to sun. Haste is the enemy. When.

RowingIn Eden

In the winter morning’s wild–light– that man’s name– flashed– outside his shop and memory came–quick faucet flung–open flooding, flushing the system and then stillness–suppression– of the striking hip bone, the huge thick taut– not like anything I’d seen –or felt–luxury enough–to keep me tethered to the dark–in those days–the scotch shimmering over ice in a squat glass was ever the richest color– in the room–angry angry touch and the morning tenderness–severed– from all that came before–the sun flickering.

Judith Baumel is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program at Adelphi University. A former director of the Poetry Society of America, her poetry, translations and essays have been published in POETRY, THE AGNI REVIEW, THE NEW YORK TIMES and THE NEW YORKER. Her books of poetry are THE WEIGHT OF NUMBERS NOW (University of Miami Press, 1996).

All images from Eleanor Dubinky‘s performance installation TRANSIT.

TRANSIT is a hybrid dance and video work that uses large-scale projections and live performance to create an immersive cross-cultural experience of international public transportation.

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