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.

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

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

photo by: Dean Terry

Our Lady of Compromise
- at the Corner of
Stability and Main -
invites you to a
Sisterhood Brunch
in Honor of
Everyone Being the Same.

Weekly Services
are held:
Every Minute
you are in it.
(- And you’re expected to attend…
although significant contributions
of money or time
allow one to
more than occasionally
offend.)

The Rules, Luther-like,
are nailed up on
the door;
Parishioners encouraged
to come up with more.

- SKE, January ’09