poiesis of the narrative

poiesis of the narrative

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

1/5. inheritance

moses rots and veils,
arms raising through exodus.
and aaron, in turn, holds ritual
and brown bread and oil.

near the prophet
still sacrificing,
next to the man pulled from the nile,
aaron knows how the acacia should feel,
affixes horns to the altars.

there is pain in needing something from Heaven —
moses knows as much.
there is more pain, though,
in having something Heaven needs.

@Wolfi <33

2/5. confluence

nonpassive and feeling, Heaven speaks in the feminine —
anatomical and non-anatomical, semiotic or not,
tissue and text. a co-affect,
one made as we merge into one another.
a becoming, a co-emergence,
that somewhere, a girl
gathers locusts in a veil,
dreams of a Hashem who sounds like
her mother.

@Euphory <33

3/5. damascus

a pharisee rides hard,
then breaks.
the world tilts.
he falls from his horse
into light.

4/5. interstice

in the dusk between two testaments,
she presses her finger to the temple veil,
and it parts like warm dough.

before sacrifice,
there was feeding:

goat’s milk on cracked stone,
naamah humming in the hollow of a boy’s rib.
what is midrash if not the sound of a child wailing
and someone answering i’m here?

sometimes, divinity is leavened.
sometimes, it ferments.
in shiloh, a woman mouths shmuel
and bleeds into her sandal.

Heaven has no anatomy,
but it has a womb.
bone meets bone, sinew woven,
fingering words in amniotic salt —

the text is written in reverse:
first, a breast. then, manna.
then, hallelujah.

5/5. kether

she scrapes honey from a jawbone,
lets it coat the psalms caught in her throat.
above her, the sky is bruised,
not with night, but something unspoken
between death and covenant.

in her dream, the cherubim are not angels
but mothers. they are not winged,
but wide-hipped, weeping.
milk leaks from the ark.
she touches it,
and forgets the sound of no.

the veil burns inward —
in be’er-lahai-roi,
a well bears the shape of a ribcage,
and hagar spits out the word el-roi
like it’s bitter pomegranate.

Heaven drips
slow as oil on a priest’s collar,
no throne. just
a pelvis,
blooming.

cradle

every resurrection
begins in the kitchen;

her prayers spill salt
across the hillside, seep through
cedar bark, feed the silence.
blood dries black on linen,
but still, a woman wraps the infant Torah
in her shawl and sings it to sleep.

every valley of dry bones
was once
a mother’s garden.

ruth

she bends into the gleaning,
hands blood-bright with barley husks.
on the threshing floor,
mercy is a garment —

heavy, and warm,
and waiting.