dingir

𒀭

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

1/5. dekálogos

Hashem fingers ten phrases into stone, passes them to Moses. Hashem then tells Moses new phrases, similar but not the same. you shall be foreign, you shall not make votives, you shall keep festivals, you shall give to me the first of each womb entrance, you shall not appear to me empty-handed, you shall not hand me leaven yet you shall hand me ripe fruit, finally, you shall not boil a kid in the mother’s milk. these are written on the stones that are placed in the ark, that chest, that body of Hashem kept in a tent, fed brown bread and oil, through Exodus. these phrases -- the Yahwist, ritual decalogue of Exod 34:11–27 -- need to be held: festival, votive, womb, empty, milk, ripe, foreign.

2/5. sinai

God, more than anything, is steadfast, and i am dutiful. He is the language i attach to Him, the language my grandma attached to Him. and He is the exit-wound of that language. He is the body of the man i loved, his ashes. He is the order of the Father and the matrix, tissue and text. i ask Him how much longer of this wilderness, and He says it’s all wilderness. (He is in a tent, in some desert in the ancient near east, a co-affect. it is all wilderness.) He reminds me that the exodus doesn’t stop happening and asks me to tell Him of the feeling of a full stomach, a warm tea.

3/5. crucifixion

ēlî ’ēlî lāmāh ‘ăzavtānî. the child of nazareth recites verses He knows, verses His mother recited, too, once. the closure of things in the opening of the cut on His neck; the closure of things in the role for Him. the cup’s too runny, though He’s thirsty now, though no hyssop nor oil feels right. He fell on His knees in the morning, He feels the nails in His feet now. His mother recited these verses: that’s His last thought on this cross, in golgotha, miles from nazareth.

Easter

i'll not go from the crypt; on this Easter morning, i'm remaining. i left Him here, nazareth's child. oil, fig leaves, cinnamon, on His flesh, His neck, His thighs. i've no reason to think of things other than these. i'm remaining here.

4/5. nephesh

there’s this man, long hair, lifted right from the valley of nevo. the rite calls for ripe flesh of lemon, of cucumber, of leek; oil on chest, tonic in the raisin cakes. in his chapters, he tells me i can’t keep lurers. the rite calls for narrative, chinese takeout, cuts on the liver. rumor is i’m lonely for nothing. rumor is his name lost its vowels. the feel of him is fuzzy, like rotten tofu; the grief grows like flowerless ivy on the convent’s veranda, next to the lilies, the nasturtiums, the creeping, frosting-colored foxglove. the rite calls for these. in his closure he tells me, "it’s never not ugly."

cyclical

i’m hit in moonlight / like a gong, like the midnight / eyes of nazareth. that’s the verse. once in one thousand years, God lifts men from the nile, from nevo, from the necro reign of rome. for me, it’s from north of the city. the lure of these men is like vampiric thralls, like the constellation with no name that rises, lovelornly, in the fertile crescent. love like this ransoms you, like God, lulls you, like God, touches your ribs, like God.

exegesis

the first thing you forget, in grief, is how far horev is from egypt.

lovelorn

in the fell of leviticus, there’s a heifer in a valley, no fault nor yoke, only a ritual for fracturing her neck.

daniel 10:6

the line of his nose, / necklace thickly on my cheek. / my feet on his feet. that's the verse. the lover from the negev valley in flesh lifts his eyes to mine, like this, feeling things not even nevuchadnezzar felt. it's like lime on glass. it is like rumors, how they lilt and fell. it's like the cucumbers of kings. lilies in the china, chinese in the night. he's the votive, the real thing in the unlit tent of canaan; or, the real thing in the chest, in the hole in my lung.

daniel 1:4

raising prophets has a feeling, like a pull on the nape of your neck. in or near the year that samaria falls, there is the pull of him, and he is the kind of last that feels like the first. he is handsome, and he is handsome, and he is far from home. like that, i tell him that raising prophets has a feeling. my hand is on his forearm, and then it’s not, and he’s left to fall himself home.

daniel (no verse)

i'm vigiling him, the friday nights, the tofu fudge, limning, the romantic. he flits into my life through the fifth floor. the verse is never not this, his name never not therein. in the fell of my life, he's cherry cola, he's nicotine on neck, he's knees on knee. i'm contrite for him. i veil, i inch, i lose my footing. restless, north of the constellation of the city, he lowers his voice. "i’ve felt love only once or twice," he tells me.

daniel (again, i am verseless)

i keep this cart of his things next to the couch, the freudian one, in the living room. it is his freshman yearbook, the letters he wrote me, the candles i vigil through. it's the tapestry he printed on, it's his lighter. not the nice one, though. his newest gallery is on the wall, in the night, one of bones, in charcoal, in oil relief, on canvas unfine, like vellum. in my grief, it feels like i keep gang over these things.

5/5. prognosis

wheat and tares, lemon, myrrh, gold in the temple, the things the child of nazareth touches linger through the verses. He’s looking for new textures, new rhetoric of them. thumb on His friend’s nose, leafing through fig trees, through His mothers necklaces. i think of Him young, feeling for the right words, then years later, His lessons cryptic, off line. "you’ll not get me," He tells others. "now, you’ll not get me. later, later, later, it’ll feel less opaque, less cloudy."