poetryA collection of 44 posts

Tonight, when I strike a match in my kitchen
and say, lehadlik ner shel Chanukkah—
the word for light catches in my throat
like a bone.

Blessed are You—
You who are praised in every kaddish,
great and holy—
they say Your name grows
each time we say it.

Does it grow tonight
by the muzzle-flash,
by the blood on the boardwalk?

The sea keeps davening
its indifferent psalm,
kol Adonai al ha-mayim,
voice of the Unending on the waters—

but today the loudest voice
was the news anchor
mispronouncing Chanukkah
over donuts growing stale
and plastic dreidels
behind police tape.

Half a world away,
my heart is pressed between the pages
of someone else’s siddur,
stained with someone else’s
first-night oil.

Half a world away
I watch my own candle burn,
refusing to believe this
is what it means
to increase the light.

I'm writing because I cannot leave.

The front door opens—I've tried—
but when I step through I wake
in the cellar, neck stiff, knees bruised,
throat raw like I've been screaming
though I can't recall the sound.

A room should sit
between the kitchen and the hall.
I know where it belongs. I feel
the space where it isn't, the gap
my body strains to fill.

Stairs spiral up. I've counted:
thirteen steps. At the top
I'm in the cellar again,
wrists scraped, fingers numb.

I don't know how long
I've been climbing.

No windows rattle. No pipes
groan. The silence isn't peaceful—
it's alert.

Clothes cling, damp.
There's no tap, no sink, no rain.
My shoes are caked with dirt
from a yard I've never seen.

I'm writing again.
(I think I've done this before.)
I can't hear the scratch of it.
Can't feel the paper. The ink just
appears, and it looks older
than the hand that's moving it.

If you find this:
I tried the door.
I'm in the cellar.
I'll try again.

I have to try again.

When the clouds gather in their covens,
when the rain drums its feral rhythm,
when lightning scrawls its sigils on the dark—

the storm calls.

You would choose the stale-air cage?
The bloodless flicker of fluorescent tombs,
the click-clack-death of keyboard incantations?

No.

When the wind howls its summons,
when thunder cracks the marrow of the world,
when the air tastes copper-sharp and wild-whipped—

that's liturgy.
That's the ancient demand.

Clear the calendar.
Silence the phone.
Stand upon the storm's fangs
and—devouring—be devoured.

Let it drench you in its wild attention.
Let it bare you like a revelation.
Let it call you back to primordial rites.

You are not late for a meeting—
you're late for this.

We swap hyperlink chatter for chain-mail clatter,
thumb-sparks peppering cheap denim with ember freckles.
No mission statement—only steel on strop or stone,
queer clang leaking from the shoebox flat like pirated midnight radio.

I skim my grin along the grinding wheel,
metal tang flooding my mouth like a bitten coin.
You answer with an axe kissing spruce,
each chip a swirl of winter kindling,
each swing muscle's rebuttal to the canon of apology.

Swords belong to Sundays—polished beside the sink:
dish suds, rainbowed film, your elbow nudging mine.
We study beveled edges and boundaries together—
keep fingers clear, keep wrists loose,
keep gossip sharp enough to julienne shame.

Daggers wedge into boot tops like a spare key taped inside the fuse box;
the metro lurches, a flash of steel where adverts used to glare,
commuters blink and blame the neon,
never clock the covenant riding our calves.
We travel light, pockets bristling with maybe.

Spears won't fit the studio,
so we lash steak-knives to broom poles with bike-tube strips,
stack them in a milk crate by the radiator—angles waiting,
warm metal scenting the air like rain on tin gutters.
Our armoury grows on the floorboards.

Risk isn't rhetoric; it nicks.
You misjudge the draw—tip snips a stray curl,
burnt hair rising like solder smoke;
I loop gauze as you laugh at the sting,
our shared breath clinking louder than any lecture on resilience.
Last spring's blade-kiss still brackets my palm,
a silent grin the steel recalls when I forget;
tonight it winks beneath dish-soap light, proof enough.

Inventory in motion, never just counted:
an awl punches fresh holes in the belt of bad news;
a boning knife fillets lies from the spine of whispers;
a crochet hook loops copper wire into trip-line lace.

Edge to edge we stand, spines aligned, steel tongues spelling breach.
Our blades keep singing, shouldering daylight through the crack.

They crow over corpses,
grin from gutted homes
they claim as ramparts—
raise rotting banners
above splintered stone,
surveying flooded streets
like conquerors gloating
over vanquished dead.

Politics as pastime
curdles conscience,
barters breath for points,
scores sorrow in salt.
Some cradle lives
like cupped embers;
others stack the dead
like carrion coins.

Their glee grinds
like grit in gears,
scrapes mercy raw—
a chorus of jackals
gnawing the bones
of unburied grief.

Beloved, tonight we gloss
our mouths in Aramaic, wet
palates sweet with sugya,
thumbs tracing letter
and thigh—shin, pey, tav—
scripture skims skin,
mouth fluent beneath the argument:
a pilpul pressed
tongue-deep in mitzvot,
pliant halakha
of heat, inked hips
writhing responsa.

My lips shape blessings
into every syllable of you,
each phrase traced
with the slow sincerity
of tevah, the turning
return of teshuvah—
we unroll together,
meaning spilling
beyond the margins.

Na'aseh, we will do—
your hips already answering
questions I haven't asked,
V'nishma, we will hear
how my mouth knew
to find this blessing
before my mind could name it,
the way revelation
always comes after
the body says yes.

My hands
open new commentary
as you counter, quick—
your laughter a rebuttal
against my wandering thumb,
your hip insists
on a different footnote.
We argue with touch,
my tongue posing questions
you refuse to answer plainly—
instead, you return
with a tease of your own,
until meaning leaps
from your lips to mine—
and the proof is always in your reply.

Our study argues explicit:
mouth debates manuscript,
we chant ourselves
into contradiction,
commandments bend
under our questioning,
gates swing wide
for blessings that refuse
to be written down.