Hevron
And when we walked down Shuhada street, I felt
There is no G-d but G-d
Each home a dusty emerald body
An iron bar sealed over each sanitized door, a sterilized street
And we were a few bartered mandrakes sneaking through what had been stopped up
While myriads grew ever larger behind caged windows
And later at Machpelah,
I stuck my hands through bars and wept alongside Mother Leah, weeping
And all the water we had drunk ran down my face and breast
The Lord, at least, is One
Surely a mother knows to weep for Simon and Levi as well after Dinah
Surely an unloved sister weeps for her children as they grow up to spill blood onto dust
Alongside a mother who cannot weep for her children
Mishna Ketubot 4:4
And a blister of sky erupts
Over the most prosaic of places
“It’s called a zeugma” my teacher explains
As we yoke ourselves to the sovereignty of heaven
And to the limits of interpretation
Our minds and our boundaries are ripped
While we watch in real time
Over centuries
Ancient death sentences limited, transmuted, liberation made liveable by squishing Divine Judgement into the margins…
And I have broken six of my nails today trying to claw my way in, to find a foothold if only in pseudepigrapha
While in some apocryphal tongue
A small child whispers
“Who knows one?”