Mourning

At the moment his knife touched your neck, I lay on the ground, silently bleating. The woman next to me smelled of sweat and cinnamon; I could feel her arms pressing into my back as we bowed. I was on my knees at the moment his knife approached your chest. As he drew the blade between your bones, his fingers tripped on your blood speckled fur, a clump of white and red.

"May His Glorious Mercy Be Praised".

Her wet elbow brushes my breasts as we stand, and the string slowly fades to white from red. Its color makes me think of the white of your eyes when you grow afraid - grew afraid, that is.

"Forever and ever. Amen."

I am silently bleating.

Why I Don't Like Cocktail Parties

"She's very pretty - in an Every Woman Has Curves type of way".

She sipped from her glass; you could see the alcohol glistening on her lips for a moment before evaporating, and you thought about photosynthesis, and how plants are constantly transforming chemical into other chemicals and all our cells are always changing.
Her dress was the color of grape leaves, and her arms looked vaguely like vines.
You wanted to say that this made her seem ripe, but really, it made her look menacing.
She kept sipping, waiting for you to make some witty remark.

"I write poetry", you said.

She laughed.

"Recite".

Her eyes gleamed as she tilted her head.

"Lady of wine,
why do you not let me pluck of your vine?
I asked for a sip, would you give me a drip,
of that juice so divine?"

"Well, that wasn't Shakespeare."

Her head has gone down again. She purses her lips, then comes close and whispers, "I want a man who can be cruel."
"Do you think that poets can be cruel?"
"I don't know. It depends on their words."

You laugh.

Numbness

She listened to the music, then numbed herself with some chocolate, before she could cry - or write.

To write requires some sort of emotion, but those were too much too handle now. Chocolate, on the other hand, was easy - it was soft in her hands, easy to chew - and - what exactly?

She watched her figure grow larger, felt the little puffinness in her arms and beneath the circles of tiredness that lined her eyes, but the thought of exploring herself was worse than all the bad reflections, so she continued to degrade with decadance.

But what use was the decadance if she could not write a poem about the soft brown, the sticky sweetness that stuck to her fingers?

As useful as a lollipop, she said, and felt proud of herself for making up the term, even though she had no one to share it with - just a bit of sadness and some coffee.

Mishle 16 - Draft 3

"It is from God that words come", she said, and he called them gifts of the tongue. His hands were turning the knobs of her breasts, his lips licking the little bumps below her nipples, which had always been too orange for her taste - so she made him kiss her in the dark.

And sometimes she thought that she got it, because what were humans if not little creatures tossing around in the night, feeling around for the God's presence like she felt for his flesh, trying to distinguish meaning from nonsense like her fingers diffrenciating between skin and sheets.

He annointed her over his bed, with the sweat of his forehead. She licked the insides of his thighs, and kissed the covenant that lay between them, sealed in a white mark upon her hair.

"But emotions come from man", she said, and she thought, "And sometimes from woman".

But by then, he was too busy to hear her,  his thighs wrapped around her thighs, his chest hairs brushing up against her breasts, and amid the breaths of prayers, she could feel her hair unwinding, with no words to capture the slight shattering - only a kiss that tasted of wine and cinammon.

Mishle 16 - 2nd Draft

"It is from God that words come", she said, and he called them gifts of the tongue. His hands were turning the knobs of her breasts, his lips licking the little bumps below her nipples, which had always been too orange for her taste - so she made him kiss her in the dark.

And sometimes she thought that she got it, because what were humans if not little creatures tossing around in the night, feeling around for the God's presence like she felt for his flesh, trying to distinguish meaning from nonsense like her fingers diffrenciating between skin and sheets.

He annointed her over his bed, with the sweat of his forehead. She licked the insides of his thighs, and kissed the covenant that lay between them, sealed in a white mark upon her hair.

"But emotions come from man", she said, and she thought, "And sometimes from woman".

But by then, he was too busy to hear her,  his thighs wrapped around her thighs, his chest hairs brushing up against her breasts, and amid the breaths of prayers, she could feel her hair unwinding, their covenant falling apart, with no words to capture the slight shatterings - only a kiss that tasted of wine and cinammon.

Mishle 16

"It is from God that words come", she said, and he called them gifts of the tongue. His hands were turning the knobs of her breasts, his lips licking the little bumps below her nipples, which had always been too orange for her taste - so she made him kiss her in the dark.

And sometimes she thought that she got it, because what were humans if not little creatures tossing around in the night, feeling around for the God's presence like she felt for his flesh, trying to distinguish meaning from nonsense like her fingers diffrenciating between skin and sheets.

He annointed her over his bed, with the sweat of his forehead. She licked the insides of his thighs, and kissed the covenant that lay between them, sealed in a white mark upon her hair.

"But emotions come from man", she said, and she thought, "And sometimes from woman".

But by then, he was too busy to hear her,  his thighs wrapped around her thighs, his chest hairs brushing up against her breasts, and amid the breaths of prayers, she could feel her hair unwinding, their covenant falling apart, with no words to capture the slight shatterings, no broom to sweep up the shards of glass - only a kiss that tasted of wine and cinammon, a slight itch on her left nipple, and a bit of white that would come out in the shower.

Fucking

""Don't push it", she said, as if I could do anything but, with you running around in my head. Kisses became evidence that you meant to leave me, and I would have preferred slaps, to the uncertainty of nights between your thighs, if I weren't so addicted to your fucking body."

She paused."That is the worst fucking writing I've ever seen - and I've read Daniel Steele".
"Daniel who?"
"Steele. She writes harlequin romance novels."
"Ok."
"You know the type that I'd like to read, if I weren't so busy trying to harlequinize my reality."
"Is that a word?"
"Shakespeare created neologisms - why can't I?"

Their conversation dangled (yes, like the Simon and Garfunkel song), as they sat on the couch, his laptop lying between them - and as she read her novel, he reread his words, and found them lacking; her kisses no longer seemed real, and he began to doubt that she loved him.

What kind of a girlfriend doesn't like your writing, anyway? Not one he needed - but he was so addicted to fucking her body.

Free Writing

They say that Israel waxes and wanes like the moon;
the bright orb leans against the blue sky;
I am enveloped by your black clouds,
mists winding and unwinding from my thighs,
two thick sticks that once held light inside me,
but now it is only when I feel you release,
that the emptiness decreases slightly,
a silver sliver worming its way through the hollow,
in a way that a burrower might forge an unkosher sukkah, or a hobbit hole:

If Israel is a menstruant woman, will God not nibble the crevice of her neck,
or bite her thighs?
Will His lips not touch her breasts?

But the purity must be preserved:
Let us hang a white sheet between us,
lest I stain you scarlet, as I stained your couch,
that time I was a week early -
and let us not touch each other,
lest my moon stop shining.

I could not love you because my lips could not speak,
there could be no becoming, the small act of creation
formed with each letter, like a kiss -
and what world have we created between us,
this little couch, and those tiny burgers,
 and silences to light our journey,
which once was lit by the moon of our stomachs,
waxing and waning into each other,
hushed "I loves you"s breathed into the dark,
the breath of being, and I nurtured your seed inside me,
and then resorted to cliches,
when the love could bear me no longer.

Planes' Plie

"I have become weaker than the wind", you said, "spinning in each direction like a ballerina with a broken leg", and in between the loathing for your mixed metaphors, I thought of a plane, of the wind pushing and pulling to bear you away from me, like the slow withdrawing of our thighs beneath mud-colored sheets.

I was menstruating, and resentful of a world that told me the blood between my thighs didn't mean anything, and somehow this was liberation. Men never had to be liberated - even though, according to Rousseau, they were everywhere in chains: "It's different when you're enslaved to yourself, because, in addition to being the slave, you're also the master",  I said, on our first date, but you just laughed and poured me more wine. I got so drunk, I nearly vomited while giving you a blowjob, but you were still able to come in my mouth, and when I left in the morning, I knew that you'd call me.

It was on the fourth date that I brought you flowers - I thought I was so cool for shifting the gender paradigm. You spent an hour looking for a vase; by the time you found one, the petals had wilted slightly, and I had peed four times.

 

 I like peeing; I like the feeling of letting go. So why is it so hard to release you, crystal by crystal, before your yellow rots in my mouth like a bunch of dandelions? I used to pick them during summer afternoons, and weave them into my hair, a walking stereotype waiting for the dramatic music, accompanied by deep-voiced male narration: The young lady tries not to cry as she reads Susan Sontag's ode to urination, and imagines airplanes dancing in the wind like disfigured ballerinas.

Shmuel 1/Rilke (trans S. Mitchell)/Cher

 He came to me through the shadows;
 at night we played chess beneath white sheets,
 flashlight between skinned knees -
 like the child that grows,

our love learned to swallow tears,
our lips learned to lie,
our mouths whispered good-bye:

Now, who will play with my fears?

Tragicomic Cups of Coffee

Maggie had lost the ability to focus. She clicked on headlines in the NY Times and NY Magazine, glancing at the top paragraph of each article before closing the tab on her browser. In between these attempts to read the news, she would go out for coffee with friends and blame all her problems on Facebook.

    The cafe nearest to her was one of those artsy places: Jazz played constantly in the background, and it sold salads with names like "Jerusalem Syndrome" and "Billy Holiday Delight". When Maggie was younger, she once dreamed that she was the Messiah, but then her teacher told her he had to be a king, and she was too young to dream about sex-change operations - speaking of which, there was some show about trannies that was the latest hit on Israeli TV, but being too lazy to read the article, Maggie didn't know exactly why the damn thing was so popular. The headline was enough, along with the picture of a drag-queen, wearing a silver necklace she would - what a silly phrase, "die for". Who on earth would die for a necklace, unless they were already suicidal? Well, give up a coffee for, perhaps.

    Maggie had a date that night, with some British dude she had met at a party. He had red hair, and she liked the way he smiled -but most of all, she liked his ability to completely skewer someone with his words, while laughing. There must be a more eloquent way to express that, but it's hard to be eloquent when you spend most of your time stalking photographs of other people's babies.

    When he showed up at her door with flowers, she was surprised - no one had ever bought her flowers before. She usually dated progressive types, who made you split the bill on the first date. She was beginning to suspect their feminism was merely stinginess in disguise. After she put the flowers in water, and spent fifteen minutes searching for a vase, they went to the local ice-cream shop. He ordered mint. She ordered chocolate.

    Afterwards, she didn't remember much of their conversation. She didn't even remember her asking him to come inside, but soon they were a mess of chest and lips and thighs, and her dress lay on the floorm her bra strewn over a chair. His boxers had landed on her laptop.

    Afterwards, they fell asleep in each other's arms, and when she woke up, she found a thank-you-note on her pillow. He'd forgotten his glasses on her desk. The entire day, she waited for his phone-call. She kept the note and the glasses in her top drawer.

    But no phone-call had come by the time she went to sleep (2 am) after several stressful cups of coffee. The jazz trumpets seemed to echo the beating of her heart, syncopated and out of sorts, and she wished that her own body could sound as beautiful as the music of an era where people didn't waste their time looking up online pictures of cats.

    The next morning, she took out the note and re-read it. She held the glasses to her breasts, and imagined his lips on her nipples. Again, he did not call. On the third day, she decided she might as well be productive and write some emo poetry, but the words would not come.

    It took a month for her to throw out the glasses. The note remained buried in the miscellaneous file that she kept in her closet. Soon, she found herself another first date - this time at the local cafe. Her partner was very impressed that she knew all the waiters, and she felt herself smiling halfway through her first sip of caffeine - but she did not invite him in at the end of the evening, and he went home feeling anxious.

    He spent the night weighing the pleasure of her laughter against the constriction in his chest when he felt pain - he had recently been spurned by another, and why risk a second chance at heart-break?

    When the phone-call she expected did not come, she was surprised to find she had learned not to cry. The next time she went out, she practiced a frown to take between sips, lest the man in question think that she likes him, lest he break her heart - and the good man, taking note of her frown, decided she wasn't interested, and went home to bury his bitterness in a cup of coffee.

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.

Jeremiah 49

Tonight I can not focus: You face appears in my mind, surrounded by shards, the broken cities of the nations that will be destroyed - Ammon and Edom and other names I have been taught to care about. He said to show him the writing, but how can he know me? How can I let him kiss me when my thighs - what about my thighs? They no longer long for your touch, but they are still my thighs, and my body is still my body.

I do not like this sense of ownership, any more than I like the destruction of a nation I can not understand. Words like "revenge" ring hollow, and I can not define terms like "love" or "intimacy". I am told that revenge is the best happiness, or maybe the other way around.

It doesn't really matter. I am here, full of coffee, on a bed, trying to figure out what I want, afraid to know, because then I must claim it - just as I was afraid to let the words of this chapter seep through me, words about swords and orphans, prophecies about nations that exist now only in our imagination, the most powerful place of all.

I once watched a scientist talk about how humans were the only species whose imagination alone could lead them to orgasm, and I wanted to ask how she knew. Had she spoken to the dolphins and the lizzards? Do scientists even know how to measure when other species have orgasms? Perhaps these seem like silly questions, but so was her lecture, I guess.

It was a TED talk - very hit or miss, that website - and I think now I'm supposed to make some sort of joke about cum and cock and white stuff hitting someone's eyebrow, but I really don't want to.

My male friends tell me that sex with a condom is just not the same. Well tough luck. As with so many other things in life, its the woman who carries the burden - and most religious women don't even believe in abortion, so there we are, stuck between the choice of violating our beliefs, marrying men we don't love, or becoming social outcasts.

I have no idea what this has to do with Jeremiah, unless its that this too, is about conquering and violatins, and doesn't the Talmud compare land to a woman's body?

Tractates of thighs waiting to be learned by heart.

Waiting, waiting, waiting -we've already forgotten what we are waiting for. Time to bring in the Becket, only I despise postmodernism, with a - not a real passion, but an ironic passion, because feelings are so passe - almost as passe as prophets.

Please pass the salt. Let me sprinkle it between your eyes. Her face is so cute when she cries.

Jeremiah 48

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The Perils of Gossip

As she spoke, she could feel each word forming a wrinkle on her soul. She clutched at her sunglasses, as if the sun would pierce her skin, that little soft spot near her heart that tingled when she sounded out his name. Her laughter seemed false; the chocolate lost its magic, and she shrank into fear like a shadow. "I wish I could hold you", she said, but the breasts were far, the thighs on another shore. The sand was soft; grains seethed in an out of the water, like the blood that was pumped through four chambers, whose purposes she could not fathom, anymore than she could understand the distance between them: An ocean no mariner dared sail, and on the other side, a continent that would remain alone, unconquered and untamed. A field of weeds surrounded by purple flowers. Grains that seethe like your thighs. I bite my lips, and try not to whisper your name when I close my eyes.