HEBRON


    How much is us? Why shall we not
    in such burning place live out our allotments?

    nothing looks good on paper

    if you can tame it, you can have it

    -- from "Not This Mouth" by Jasper Bernes



the heart hot with shrapnel
where a man shot a baby in her carriage
where a man shot a child who held a stone

the belly twisting sour
where those people hung their hateful flag
its colors like a stick in my eye

the mind which insists
there is only one story and it is ours,
lists our traumas, every one their fault

the spirit lofted toward God
by the air of this holy place
which only we should breathe

can we tame our animal hatreds
and escape this constriction
I want to believe

This year, National Poetry Writing Month and #blogExodus start at the same time. This is something of a brain-bender for those of us who are active both in the poetry-writing world and the preparing-for-Pesach world. (It's not like I have anything going on this month or anything.)

Given that these two things are overlapping this year, I don't know that I can promise that I'll manage both on a daily basis. (I don't know that I'll manage either on a daily basis!) But we'll see where things go.

The first NaPoWriMo prompt invited us to click through to the Bibliomancy Oracle and see what quote we got, and then to write a poem sparked by that quotation. The first blogExodus theme is "believe." I just went on a very intense Dual Narrative Trip to Hebron (about which I wrote a rather lengthy post, but which is still on my mind).

Today's poem came out of all of these.