I understand your name: Wailing.

They’ve misunderstood and think
*they* are meant to wail
but I know it’s you, Wall, doing the crying:

How much can you contain the anger fear devastation desperation contempt of others
before you harden to smooth,
past able to absorb
blacken
from the endless need
so many hands
…simply crumble?

Now they call you “Western”

but I hear you Wailing
and I have some advice from
My tenure as everybody’s
refuge -shadow -rock -barrier:

Quit
While you are 2000 years behind.

They will only miss you
when they can’t punch and kiss you.

- God, 2014

What hurt most was the lack of recognition
when I bumped into myself last night;
I surfaced by the river
in no light,
and asked myself my name,
old fool that I am – -
till it hit me, by (of all things)
pulling at my leg.

Aha! It’s me! I cried – -
How many ways
I’ve tried
to run…
but in the end, something always pulls
(especially since it all began that way, for us;
The God of Abraham
is fond of structure.)

No matter;
I am more whole now that I am shattered:
Less scattered.
And somehow I am sure
that I will meet myself again – -
perhaps I will keep breaking.

From too many years
of faking.

- Jacob / Israel

–
A balcony apart
From my heart
(Where a small, quiet temple with fewer rules renews one member
Every September)
–

Because this is not
a House of God:
What kind of holy gathering place
Has nothing growing? In which I cannot count ten.

What we have here
is a House of Men.

- SKE, March 2013

Artemis, by Violscraper

Some spaces wiser
not to fill; Hunger is more
useful than the kill.

- SKE, Winter 2012

But I know it’s autumn because the yearly Torah reading cycle is back at Genesis, with all of the complex internecine business – Betrayal! Sex! Murder! – that being human, even the kind that talks to God, seems to brings with it. It’s the time of year I like to bring out my biblical poetry (every girl needs some in her repertoire, no?) and post it for the four or six people who appreciate it.

Specifically, I am fascinated by the world’s original love triangle, sparked, I think, by the world’s original overprotective mother…..

I know I promised a post on the roles we each play throughout our lives, how they never and always are changing. On a recent trip to the US without my family, I slept at my grandmother’s house, and so did my adult brother, without his family, and my parents. For a minute it was 1985 again, except that my grandpa wasn’t there. It was crazy how natural it felt, to be in the same setting with the same people and to have everything be so radically different…and yet, organic.

I’m still and always a sister, a daughter, a granddaughter, and a friend, even though I’ve added writer, mother and wife to my resume, and spend most of my time in those roles. It got me thinking in a lot of ways that I’m still processing.

But this post is going to go off in another direction, and explore the archetypes of all the roles we play, in that original, penultimate work on relationships — AKA the Bible. Don’t knock it till you’ve read it as high literature, without trying to apologize for anyone’s behavior. Only then does it get real.

Without further ado, my triptych on a love triangle (one in which ‘Team Jacob’ is already a given…Sheesh. Patriarchs!)

***

Jacob

Part I: Transaction Formation
(Genesis 25:27-34)

I’ve watched the women
for years
bringing up the hard things
with food in their hands;
hungry, tired, lustful men
will go far to quickly satisfy
the urge…
But I have the patience
of the tents
in my hands.

The women speak with me
of things no man
should hear,
as I blend and melt into this smooth
and hairless world of soft voices and
female suggestions.
And, like me,
no woman I’ve known is famished
the way the men are;
they have each other, at least,
while the men seem
always
empty of something.
(It is Father always digging,
finding what? beneath the rocks and clay.
Is it his blood there that he sees
in the dry red earth?)

*****

And now I cook a soup
outside while they gossip about him.
(Sometimes I simply cannot stand to listen…)
It strikes me hotly as I view the broth
that no girl has
ever blushed when I walk into the tent;
it is like I am not even a man to them.
(Although some say that I have
Father’s laugh, but I have never heard him…)
Oh, they giggle, it’s just Jacob.
Jacob braids hair, talks of God, tells histories
and stirs porridge. He does not smell, like he does,
of game (or fun);
Jacob is not wild like him (and free) and hungry
- ravenous –
for life. (She might say: For me.)
Jacob’s tongue is satisfied with slow, methodic speech;
he does not try, with wine in his blood,
to convince anyone of greatness,
he does not dance among the cattle,
and he does not sing
when he washes.

Jacob will love like a woman loves,
softly, like worship, in the night.

I look hard into the soup, stirring
and, like him, just for once:

I want to love –
love everything, hugely -
by day.

****

I’ve watched the women
for years
bringing up the hard things
with food in their hands.

I regard his hunger carefully and somewhere, now, I know:

I will drape myself in this man’s shadow
everywhere
I go.

***

Rachel’s Sister, Leah

Has he no heart,
that passionate man
who sees angels in his dreams
(but can not see people?)

When he sprang up from our
marriage bed,
as if burned,
cursing
like uncle Ishmael
or brother Esau
- duped! -
did he see only
the ugliness
of deceit
reflected in my face?

Or was it my own
that he
(like Father)
so suffered to behold?…
An embarrassment, not nearly of my sister’s mold.

Oh God!
If you are there, please hear your daughter Leah:
and help me to resist her benevolent
Pity.
(She might die, God, and make this nightmare end…)

(Ugly thoughts from an ugly, and now ruined, girl.
God, Forgive me.
And Heaven forefend.)

But if you are there, please give me something
that makes him see
that he is just like me.

Why can’t he just
Like me?

***

Leah’s Sister, Rachel

I.

What I would not do
to reverse
the curse – -
of choosing men’s affections
over women’s love.
(A father like mine is hard to get over,
or out from under.
No wonder.)

Could it be
my body,
so convinced it must always
be beautiful
- for them –
keeps children
(and women)
on the other side?
(And all this time: my sister cried.)

Oh why!
Do I feel loathing for her runny and merciful maternal face?
I rush to make it better…
and myself:
Better. Always better.

I see already poor Leah’s sons,
how they look at me -
(like their father does);
I am no “mother” to them,
but like a teased and tugged at cousin.
And this: Do I like it?

II.

Are my full, high breasts
-aching and empty-
for vanity?
How two desires compete so fiercely
in the same tiny space!
I am like Jacob
and his hidden brother,
Together, fighting,
in my own stony womb:
Me, against myself.

Perhaps this is the lust
My husband craves;
My self destruction:
His reconstruction.

….Here’s an oldie I dug out from my files; Winter always makes me crave poetry.

Tide

Temporary sanity
filters through us all,
when the rosy-jelly-warmth of almosthappiness
settles for a time
behind our ribs and jaw.
…But there’s desire,
and imagination,
and broken promises,
that live inside our
belly
where they rise
and fall,
like tide…
Lapping up from time
to time
around our eyes – -

Where only lovers see them.
And only lovers
don’t.

- SKE, January 1998

1. Switching closets from winter to summer, seeing as I failed to do so before Passover;
2. Work for client X, due tomorrow; DONE
3. Work for client Y, due tomorrow;
4. Several technical and networking tasks involved in getting this site more spider-worthy, way overdue.

And yet. (This beloved two-word sentence is a Nicole Krauss-ism, which I have been widely borrowing, even in my everyday speech.) There is a familiar pit in my stomach that tells me I must put something down on paper. So to speak.

It’s a pit that reminds me of other pits, that makes me 16 again, and 26, all the years joined by a common physiological sense of being carried by an idea or a feeling, literally hungry for something to write. Medical science will tell you that the pit is the work of the vagus (yes, pronounced like the city in Nevada) nerve in my abdomen, which has translated the meandering chemicals of emotion from my brain into an ache of sorts.

This is all well and good but I think it’s more about the weather.

Today in Israel is what Winnie the Pooh would call a very, very blustery day. It is hot as an oven (not like a sauna) and cloudy in an overwhelming way, as if there’s a huge fire a few miles back, blowing in, or maybe a tornado. The weather is upon us. The electricity went out for a few minutes about an hour ago, and my neighbors called me from vacation to go remove whatever was blowing against their alarm sensors, which kept becoming alarmed. (I brought the pruning shears just in case I needed to fend off an actual intruder, but ended up trimming their errant roses.)

This, in short, is a desert storm (aka sandstorm), or Khamsin (Arabic); in Hebrew it’s called a Sharav, which is my favorite term for it. It is not at all uncommon to have one of these at the beginning of May, as spring turns to summer – - and I’m guessing there’s a meteorological explanation for that.

But what I know is that later on the skies will be yellowish-orange (or bright, eerie, end-of-days white) as the sun sets, as if the world was finally imploding from the economic crisis and the swine flu (Happy Windsday, Piglet!) and the Iranian menace; as if the pit in my stomach was finally expanding to envelop all of you.

I also know that I had better keep all of the windows closed if I don’t want a fine layer of orange dust all over the beds and sinks and floors.

I know that I feel longing and upheaval although it is not clear for what. And that what happens in vagus stays in vagus.

Check out a poem I wrote back in my roaring 20′s. (Suburbia still hasn’t managed to kill it for us):

Sharav (Desert Storm)

Can you show me beauty?
Nights so thick
the air suspends
the future in its teeth
ripping fleshy suburbs
from the bones of lazy poets
lovers kissing extra,
with their noses – -
slow hands;
an urgency in it
the stars are hazy fuzzy
drunken dots of fate so far away
they bear no witness
to the rhythmic frenzy
on neighborhood streets
Just tonight:
the stodgy oaks are palm trees
and boxy sidewalks turn to sand.

- SKE, March 1998

PS -By the time my host came back up in time to load this post, written yesterday, the skies have partially cleared, the wind has calmed, and the air is cool. Such is the nature of storms, I guess.

photo by: massdistraction

So, you want people?

Let them in, but just so much past the door;
otherwise they will
either park on your soul
or
you
will end up wanting more.

Choose:
Which welcome mat position?
You lose yourself,
Or you simply lose.

You know what they say:
Better to have
let them stand in the entrance hall
of you
and served them drinks and smiles
than never to have let them in at all.
…Or let them in too far.

(This should keep you busy
for a while,
Good Hostess that you are.)

- SKE, August ’08

photo: The Simpsons, from Jon Pattillo's Blog

Leviticus 10:1-3

Brother,
these rules will be the death of us:
this “how to please me”
this tutorial of the soul.
How can passion
wear a girdle?
Answer questions?
Wash?
Where is the sacrifice
in this ritual
if our flesh isn’t in it?
Our everything,
sewn together with time…
Brother,
this lust
grows dusty
with regulation
and waiting
and brain;
It’s the ancient inertia again.
Time we climbed out of the Egypt in ourselves…

When we were slaves,
we moved,
we cried;
The One We Long For
split the sea
for bony wretches in shrouds
- – in clouds.
And now:
Princes
in regal whites,
we lounge like old women – -
knitting our urges into underwear,
cozy and maddening
and pink.
Brother,
it will be
the death of us
to think.

- SKE, May 2001

This poem was inspired by, and is imprecisely based on, a class on the Torah Portion of “Shmini,” given by Dr. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg.

I am a predator of minutes; slurping up memory from the corners,
sniffing out tasks from the walls;
A beast stalking quiet: also things never done, and the things never thought,
and sitting.

Tunneling backwards in a suburban vertigo,
I can feel late Sunday afternoon in November
at a rest stop in New Jersey; Coming back from a visit at Grandma’s in New York.
I am fifteen,
it’s raining,
and there is school tomorrow,
but only here at Someplace Named for War or History,
do I finally have a few moments alone, and nothing urgent
to possibly be.

Out of place, at peace, bored and alive.
Strangeness a segue to myself. The turnpike always gave me gray butterflies,
the Becoming of it.

It feels like that.

- SKE, October 2004