Eve - Our foremother

I have always been fascinated by the story of the Garden of Eden - and specifically, by an exegisis by Rashi, a scholar from the Middle Ages, that says that the serpent sexually desired Eve, after seeing her have sex with Adam, and this desire precipitated the serpent's enticement of Eve to eat from the Fruit of Knowledge - a word related to sexuality in Hebrew, since the word "daat" connotes knowledge, sex, and consent.

I am going to be uploading a few poems I have written as imaginations of Rashi's exegesis - some of them I wrote at the suggestion of a creative writing teacher, who proposed writing mini-poems from various perspectives.

I generally plan on archiving some of my work through this blog, especially during periods such as now, when I am feeling generally unproductive and uninspired. On a more ontological* level, however, I am troubled by this extended lack of inspiration - could it be I am now living a life capable of inspiring me - and if so, how do I go about changing it, short of chopping off my hair and moving to a hippie commune?

* Do I actually know what ontological means?

Insomnia's Footprint

The smell of decay fills my nostrils like the flesh of an old woman.

I grow too afraid for words, for the moons of time
that shadow the curves of our bodies.

I once thought we fit together like a jigsaw:
your arms to my shoulder, my head to your thighs -
and I hated myself for those cliches.

Now I hide in their shade,
leaving whispered phrases
unvocalized, silent as the wind,
forgotten like the stars in a city evening,
where shit-filled snow is reflected
off the lights of skyscrapers.

On Hunting Lions


 John took the cane in his hand, thinking of his grandfather, the middle aged colonialist who hunted lions. His grandfather would go out in a jeep, mosquito netting hanging down from his hat, enveloping the black stubble that decorated his chin. "Bloody razor” he would say, “cuts me half to death when I try to shave. How the hell am I supposed to look presentable without a mirror?” But perhaps the British colonial budget was short by that time, because they didn’t send him a mirror for three years, during which he refused to shave “as a matter of principle”, until the royal naval shipping company told him that if he didn’t start looking more presentable, he’d be fired. He asked them if he would be escorted home by one of their "white mockeries of an African warrior" who "spent his evening alternating between jerking off and crying for his mother" - but the next day, he bought a new razor and began hacking at the his beard like a logger in a jungle.

 “Did you even know then, why you died?” John murmured, caressing the cane, thinking of the eighteen year old’s mother. They must have come to the house decked out in military finery. The woman - what had her name been? The soldier had been named Tom Hitchens - well, his mother must have been Mary: Mary Hitchens - a nice, respectable, middle-class name, with no pretensions. It is a name that speaks of slightly faded oriental carpet and beautiful china dishes that are only brought out for Christmas dinners. The father of course, would have already been deceased, from some respectable middle-class disease, like...a heart attack. Yes, something melodramatic and sudden, in contrast to the slow bourgeois decay of the soul. So Mary would have been dreading this visit. A part of her must have known it was coming, because the military officer entrusted with this sad duty could not recall having seen her cry: “Esteemed madame, we regret to inform you that your son Tom was killed in action last week protecting the glory of his homeland and preserving the honor of the Crown. May God rest his soul.” No specifics -no, it would not do for Mary to know that her son was mauled by a lion, as an upper-level beaurocrat attempted to assert his manliness by spearing the lion with one hand, while holding a cane in the other. It simply was unbecoming of England that she should allow a person of such low birth to know classified information about hunting lions.

 Hunting lions after all, was a sport reserved for the elect few: An ancient art that had been passed down through the ages, a re-enactment of man’s dominion over animals - something that, far away from the smoggy streets of London and the Anglican churches with their sharp steeples, was not always so clear-cut, despite the words of Genesis. His grandfather however, had never understood that in order to hunt lions, one had to discover and conquer the lion within himself, and that lion was not to be found in the offices of the royal naval shipping company. After the death of Tom Hitchens, John’s grandfather was promoted - to a post in London, far away from lions, but much too close to the lion’s uglier counterpart, the human.

Of Whores and Libraries

1. I am at the sight of the romance that bore you away from me like a horse spurred on by winter wind. Like a whore surveying the street corner where she once hooked men onto her brassieres (black lace with bits of satin), I fold you into the arms of my memory, and remember the corner where you licked me like a cat, the carpet where she first felt your thighs.

The older whore pines for the young prostitute competing for men by the streetlamp. "She is slightly rounder than I was”, the older whore muses, trying not to stare at the shape of her breasts, as she pulls the shawl closer to her body. The air is frigid as a raped woman, colder than snow against your ungloved palm, and you kept on smearing the white into my brown hair – “I am painting” you said, and I laughed.

2. Our love has melted like the snow. I wrote that on the card I gave you for your birthday. We haven’t spoken since then. I called you once, but you never called me back.

I wish that it were snowing outside, that I could press my nose against a cold glass window and pretend it was your cheek, that I could tell myself that the melting white was the color of my sadness, that it too would fade beneath snow-boots and leather-clad feet.

3. The library is sterile, its carpets stained by coffee and mouse-shit, but our love has left no mark. I want to see tears in the chairs where we gently touched each other’s palms, white flowers blooming out of tables (chunks of dead wood) where we kissed, smoke steaming out of the computers where my fingers traced yours over the mouse, as you taught me how to research polling charts.

Library-mates and bedmates - a stereotypical college romance, blander than poems full of "shivering beneath the breeze of memories."

4. Almond blossoms dot brown branches, but I am still stuck in the frost of a love that has yet to thaw. These are the words the whore thought to herself, feeling the petals that chafed between her fingers. Her shawl matched the yellow of their stamens. “I wonder if flowers can cry”, she murmured, as she remembered the nights she had spent with him beneath the branches – it certainly beat the wooden building with mismatched slabs that she had seen the younger whore disappear into, on the arms of two fashionable gentlemen. She savored the saltiness of her tears, licking them like a cat.

As for me, I will get back to my calc homework, where all the questions have a right answer.

Reworking of an Emo Poem I Wrote As a Teen

1. A fresh piece of meat floats on a river of blood,
cold flesh swollen with postmortem bravado:

It's easy to be be brave when you're dead -
what do you have to fear?

2. At night, your hands slither down the mountains of my breasts;
our bed is full of oleanders strewn over wine-stained sheets -

purple petals shed like blood or uterine lining,
the brown threads of your hair weaving a nest around my thighs -

I am lost in the shadow of your valleys.

3. The earth is lush as a fine wine,
tinted red like hennaed-hair - my hands

undulating into the softness,
mounds of hair beneath my fingers.

4. The meat is drowning now,
severed sinews sinking into crimson water.

At my funeral: Will you cry, as the meat
of my body sinks into a sexless bed?

The Dangers of Eating Rotten Fruit

I ate your fruits,
my lips to your palms,
tongue on your fingers,
and black seeds.

Afterwards, I laughed,
weaving laces of deception around our love
like a virgin weaving her bridal veil,
whiter than the marble columns
you were afraid to lean on.

"They'r ancient", you whispered.
"So what?" I said, trying to be effervescent
and timeless as a river.

"God", you said, "That's such a corny metaphor".
"Why should God care about my metaphors?" I asked.

You laughed, our fingers laced into each other,
our bodies enmeshed like strings of peach-flesh,
or fig-seeds embedded in purple pulp in autumn,
skins cleaving to the brown ground.

I think I loved you then.

I am not sure, of course -
sometimes doubt tingles my spine like a lover.

On rainy nights, I press my face to the window,
pretending the raindrops are my tears.

I prefer the pane's cool glass
to tears, hot and salty
like the taste of your lips,
of rotten fruit
whose seeds still linger,
like figs in autumn,
entombed between my thighs.

Lost To Lamentations

Your hands grope in the dark, crimson
sash winding around you like blood
streaming into the crevices between us,
fingers trembling like lilacs, purple scent
stiller than marble statutes.

"Lament me on your lyre", you murmured:
I wanted to immortalize you in my poems,
like Greek pedophiles turning their hard-ons into statues

colder than corpses, whole and unfragmented
like love that has not seen the end of tomorrows -
unlike our love, querida, que qeubrava, que me quebrou.