three poems by jonathan dubow
Wicked Children
You were so giddy.
All the water had turned to blood, not just the river.
The water in the wells, the water in the pitchers,
the water in the mouths of the Egyptians.
And where they walked there was blood,
the sea is feminine. You forget the rain is the sea.
You forget your whole body is the sea.
The wind shifted,
meaning now is the time to raise the axe of your imagination.
One of the four questions is pounding on the door.
We dress up to show what’s inside.
We are in our homes. We are nearly liberated. We walk into the sea,
no longer willing to be fooled.
You char an egg and I spill my drop of wine like it’s your blood.
Anti-Seder
The language of questions and answers is part of exile itself.
There is nothing to ask or rather no one to answer.
A kiss on the mouth which requires silence.
The belly of our Torah which must be fed with table salt.
We have a flower and we’re looking at it through a magnifying glass.
Doesn’t life begin with darkness?
°
They arrive at the sea,
lilies in the shallows, warm water.
And their masters are screaming for blood,
it’s over, but Nahshon marches into the sea, a wilderness
also known as the field of grief,
of whiplash, of transmutation, yes, this is what I believe,
the world is moving in a circle, conjuring the light in which
there is no distinction of the stranger.
°
Use your arms, your hand of compassion,
and throw what was most precious over the walls.
The first letters of these words are like the rain!
The beach plum had never been more ripe.
Reactions
I flew there June 4th .
How can you leave yourself without knowing you are dreaming?
I went to work right away, the day I arrived. Ants in my room.
Coaxing the pollen out of the anthers.
The stores were mobbed. The thing I was thinking about then was proximity.
I remember on the drive down a road sign that said Gaza City 10km.
My shock and my shock at my shock. Can’t even write it.
A civil war right there and we’re just at this greenhouse
wrapping cross pollinated roses in plastic bags.
Avishai made coffee in a percolator between two trailers, talked about being here,
New York in 2001. He used the word shock. I was surprised.
I’d been taught a Jewish history that left me holding the Second Intifada
and the Kishinev pogrom in the same hand,
so in my mind Avishai must have already been numb to what was new to me.
He was tender, scared, and instead my own numbness revealed itself, then
underneath that, finally, my tenderness too.
And I now realize we drank that coffee in proximity to the future
unnavigable brutality we’d witness there.
It’s difficult to imagine in our parents and rabbis acceptance
of genocide. I must say that. Meanwhile, I was in the field
collecting tomatoes with the same hand
which still holds something alive, trying
to sweep the dust of my inaction away, and it nearly worked.
Jonathan Dubow (he/him) has recent work in Bending Genres, Heavy Feather Review, Grist and elsewhere. His chapbook, The Masters of the Holy Name, is forthcoming from JAKE. He lives in Schenectady, NY and teaches at the University at Albany-SUNY.