Breakup Prose

I could feel her chest heaving against my hand.
"Don't", she said, and I looked away so I wouldn't have to see her cry.
But I could still hear her sobs over the music; I wanted to turn up the volume, but I knew it would be rude.
"It was good", I said, "it just -"
"Wasn't good enough."
"Don't say that -"

But I knew she was right. I knew it the way I knew that I didn't like papayas, or purple negligees.

"Fuck."
"Was I bad in bed?"

I laughed. Wrong reaction. The split second before the "no" hit my lips, gave her a fear I hadn't meant to instill.

"Fuck", I said again.

She laughed. "I'm the one who should get to say that."

I didn't offer to walk her out, merely listened to the sound of her footsteps harmonizing with the drumbeats - after I heard her close the door, I turned the volume up a little higher, and lay down on my newly purchased sheets.

Blossoming (An Ode to Cliches)

You took me softly in the night:

I was a flower, and you were the stamen, emerging from deep inside me. Our kisses ripened like the papaya I bought you for breakfast.

I ate the leftovers for lunch, as you sat on a fancy couch in another country, sipping your mother's tea. You only remembered to miss me in between spoonfuls of sugar - a slave-trade commodity.

It would be easier to close myself up, like a rose in nighttime, or to let you get pricked by my thorns. Instead, I bend back my petals, and cry beneath the stalks of your feet.

ירמיהו 52 ויאיר דלל "דרך הבשמים"

ובתוכה, ובתוכך - עיר של ורדים
ובתוכי, מרירות החוחים
בלכתך אחרי במדבר, בארץ לא זרוע
נטעתי את אהבתנו - למה הרסתה את העצים
בתרם נתנם פרי בתן?

פן ירדפנו, רדפנו - ועבדנו את דודיך, הטובים מיין
מתי תשמיענו את קולך, מתי תראה לנו את פניך
ותלתף אותנו כמו המטעתף בטלית, כן נטעתף האהבתך

מתי תנשקנו ממעון קולך?

Jeremiah 51/In prepapartion for 17 of Tammuz

Words are supposed to fall from your tongue like water
in the time of a drought, and would it be enough if I covered you in my kisses,
my lips licking the skin beneath your elbow, cliches forgotten between our thighs?

I have no more poetry to offer, only the crevices of my body,
and a bit of leftover eye-makeup.

Afterwards, I'll feed you cheese, and pretend to sip your coffee,
as we both ponder the inability of this closeness to stitch together
the holes in forgotten places:

They lie beyond language, beyond words, beyond tongues and kisses,
unreachable, like the Divine Presence that left the Temple,
that kissed the Babylonians with swords.

Jeremiah kissed the scroll of revenge before sending it off,
to be sunk by a rock in the river, but Song of Songs tells us
that love cannot be quenched by water, or soothed by fire.

I have stopped praying not to be consumed - instead,
I pray to feel the power of each flame, the bitterness of these ashes
 that line the ravaged temple of your bed - a floating boat in need of new sheets.

What will she look like, the one you trade me in for?

I already picture you kissing her by the door, in a way you do not kiss me.
 I already picture our nights apart - but this month is all about separation,
between God and nation, the two lovers who could not love -
God, that sounds like the title of some corny movie,
but Oscar Wilde always said that life immitates art.

Maybe he was right, this man for whom words fell like a flood,
and he learned how to let them consume him.

Jeremiah 50 (Written from the point of view of a Babylonian)

The voice of Marduk thunders:
Iron rains down upon the earth,
there is no dearth
of rage. As sword sunders
soul from body, our god plunders
the lillies of the valley, the maidens of the earth,
who cannot compete with the sun's wrath - Bundlers
of wheat, you are the chaff; death will teach you your worth.

Yet now who thunders, His voice greater
than any I have heard, His power mightier
than the sword
of our lord?


It is the Lord of Israel, Lord of Hosts,
who will turn us all into ghosts.

What happens when you listen to Shakira

Inspired by  the Shakira song, "Soy loca con mi tigre".

Soy loca como el tigre.

Yo tambien:

Puedo correr dentro las calles de tu coracon

y pisotear las flores dentro tu sangre,

deluvios rojos que vuelven para la floresta de pensamientos,
que no pueden correr, que quedan, escondidos en los arbores,
y cantan para las palomas.

Soy loca como el tigre,
 y voy quedar, escondido, en este flore,
que duerme en tu pecho,

dos montanas ricas,

sin  arbores, sin miedos, sin tigres.