Also in this issue, an excerpt from Yael Shinar’’s poetic documentary AWAKE, ALERT, ORIENTED
_______
Yael Shinar
Suicide
How do I speak
without synonyms?
I could say that she died,
by the digits of her hand and perhaps of
her mind.
I could say that the usual things
happened:
the muscles stiffened,
the bowel moved,
the urine leaked
onto her casual clothes, down to her
black socks.
Her eyelids went a little blue and tears
dried on her face.
Then professionals came.
Had she let me, I would have taken her to
a surgeon,
to implant my love a little deeper.
Then to remove the anesthetic mask that
covers her now like a prayer shawl.
Over a year, my grief leaks out of me
like sweat, and my bowel moves.
I restore stores, I remove waste, and I
scour fleeting illnesses.
Part of the whole story goes like this:
her brother found her, hanging, still his
own as ever.
Her mother asked “yes” and “no” questions
about the past.
Satisfaction from sugar became more
fleeting after her burial,
and also more sufficient.
I began to chart distances between
synonyms.
It was noon, probably, when she began to
die.
Evening came, and I cried with my boyfriend.
Next, the sun rose, distinct in the
sky-blue sky.
1
to wake alone
to open the window to
spring chill—
a stranger to the dew
to wake alone, wander
room to room,
turning on lights,
turning them off—
the heater turned on, a
tourniquet to
quiet this mind—
the birds outside—
their feathers tremble
in the breeze—
2
This world, a substantiated
adjective meaning God,
which means,
alive and looking, or
pressing my thumb into
an old wall to taste and erase the dews of the ancients, who built it, or
the anchor that holds no ship
in the shallowest dune
of the sea,
the chain billowing up
to the surface of the
water,
or
hearing gaps between the
singing and the sung, my heart, or
memories, like ripe, wet
bones in flesh.
Or
the one by whom
we take the long view—
we see our children,
one of them will be
happy
of this land
The one who, when I ask
now, “What land?”
says at one breath in
one time,
“The one you stand on.”
“The other one.”
3
Stranger, consider the
neighbor
who wakes and makes
coffee,
straps leather over the
arches of her feet
in the same gulp of time—
on loan from the
heavens, or from God,
or from whatever we
depend upon
to rewrite confusion,
each morning,
in sconces of blessing—
as the blue blurs into
yellow,
the way light,
but no human pigment
can—
we have an analogy for
this:
the child moves from
sounds to words,
intention has already
been there some
time—
this
is no drastic or lamentable change,
it is the mystery
becoming the writing,
the air
becoming the breath—
4
Morning dews
on blades of grass,
across the down of
birds,
into
the veins of leaves.
The leaves, they are
this polysemic,
polytheistic prayer,
bowing all around
to seek the old shoot
that vanished long ago,
last winter.
The song of the leaves
sings quietly
one history of one
people
to many
unswaddled souls.
They are looking
for the name of their
God,
whose call they heard
all winter
who created limbs for
them
they only now see—
—If God does not
sit in the nostrils of the starling’s beak,
the veins of the eye
writing their script
on the new world.
Twelve Starts
—
You’ll have twelve starts from beginning
to finish,
and when you get to
eleven, we lose count, we start over.
—
The city gate
cannot tell us
by what hand it grew,
was cleaned
arched its back to let
the night through
its narrow veil
of stone.
—
The city,
so many times torn
and born
—
The sun set, having no
regret—
—
There are long days
available to us.
—
Available to us, water,
the sun setting.
—
Apples will ripen,
someone will bake yeast bread,
even in seasons we lie
in bed and grow thin, thinking.
—
A woman in a blue dress
is native to this country in the sense that, like it, she mimics the sky.
—
Guilt echoes through our
organs like organs in church bathrooms.
—
Have I nothing to say
that will etch
into emptiness
a sign of justice?
—
Etchings
seem wise investments—
not to hang, but to
make,
to get to know the wrist—
a solitary lovemaking
to time
—
Which way to the beginning?
I’ll follow you