The Four Children

The Passover Haggadah speaks of four children: the wise, the wicked, the simple, and the one who does not know how to ask

The wise child asks: What form does the hatred of our people take? And you shall answer them: There they called us capitalists, here they call us communists. To some, we are Middle Eastern foreigners, to others, the whitest of white. We are miserly aristocracy and/or beggars on the street, we are whatever is convenient to hate. We are always on trial. We never know what for.

The wicked child asks: What have you done to deserve all of this hatred? And you will answer them: Being a people is no crime by any metric worth considering. And there is nothing more my birthright than refusing to bow down.

The simple child asks: What is this? And you shall answer them: We are so much more than a memory of history. We dance even as the glass shatters. We know pain as thick as honey and we know happiness as sweet, we are, and always remain, Solomon’s riddle and the answer to Samson’s. We stand as angels. We are no ghosts.

And for the child who does not know how to ask You will tell them: Look, my dear, this is your birthright. The wind howls softer than you. We have known so many unmarked graves, but still, we name the living. There is nothing to a home but a family and books and I swear to you, my child, that the Alef-Bet will form the words even when your tongue stumbles.

@glassheartedboy

A Profitable Career

My father reminds me that poet isn’t an economically viable job description as though

1. I do not already know this and

2. He does not still dream of being a history professor. 

I never said I wanted to daisy-petal peel myself for grocery money, but sometimes I let myself dream of small fame. Chapbooks or having my lines scrawled on the pages of someone’s diary or the grey of dorm room walls. Some answer from the void. 

@glassheartedboy

Domesticating Wildflowers

One month into an apartment together and you grab his deodorant instead of yours, smell like him for the rest of the day. You’ve fallen into an easy rhythm, you cook and he launders, you hold him as you fall asleep. Even as his clockwork ticks down and grows rusty, he is there and you are both together and you are quiet. You ask if he’d like a plant - it has to be good in low light. I can’t stand it dying. - You buy a cyclamen. Magenta flowers. Take it home in a brown paper bag and tell him you have a gift, put it on his desk and open the blinds. Sunlight flooding in. The two of you, settled into an easy sweetness. 

@glassheartedboy

Writing this now so I don’t forget- an easy and meaningful fast to all those fasting. May your Yom Kippur be meaningful, and may we all be written into the book of life for the coming year. גמר חתימה תובה. May you be written and sealed for good.

The Origin Of Things

I am thinking that perhaps it is okay if we slip between the cracks of our creation stories. I don’t need to know who lit this flame. But I am tired of burning the candle at both ends.

Perhaps we sprung like this fully-formed and intertwined. The orange blossoms on your shower curtain and the dragonfruit-scented soap generated spontaneously, to sink into the dust at the end of days.

In your shower on the eve of my twenty-first birthday, I marvel at it all. Flow of water, pink bubble lather.

Tell me again of how the Lord split sea and firmament. Us in our bodies like the waves, forming and breaking and forming again, cycling, endless. 

@glassheartedboy

For Tisha BeAv

Still we mourn for lost homelands

For Jerusalem, for Spain, for Morocco, for Iran and for Iraq, for Yemen, for Egypt, for Tunisia, for Hungary, for Barcelona, for Vienna, for Sicily, for Geneva, for Portugal,

For Córdoba, for Granada, for Salonica, for Fez, for Kiev, for Lucena, for Norwich and for London, for Toledo, for Mainz, for Bilbeis, for Damascus, for Zurich, for Worms, for Brussels, for Odessa, for Hebron, for Tunis

Who will answer for every grave marker stolen and milled into paving-stone?

For every family heirloom looted and resold?

For every synagogue plundered and turned to church or mosque?

There is no family of the deceased still living there to object

How convenient it is that they all seem to have left, whether by boat or body-bag

All that remains are trinkets and souvenirs

Oh, Benyamin*, is there no respite from weeping?

Even you could not archive absence

@glassheartedboy

(*https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_of_Tudela)

Family Photos

I am walking out of my shower with a towel wrapped around my waist, and my mother stops me, smiling, gestures to my torso -  you look like your father. 

When I was a teenager I was certain I was going to die young. It wasn’t a desire, precisely, the way I’d evaluate the height of buildings, the rush of crosswalks. More like knowing it’s about to rain. A certain sort of bone-ache. 

And yet, I’ve grown old enough for my hairline to start receding.  Isn’t that a soft sort of glorious?

@glassheartedboy

Body Armor

Swear nothing can touch us? Even from this height? Sometimes I don’t know what I’m promising to protect you from. Whose hands reach in your nightmares. What stares back empty.

But I promise I am half-shield half-sanctuary and a candle lit and a dry crackling, honey you’ve seen me build a fire. You know these hands as well as anyone could. Whatever fang lunges for you breaks on me. Blunting claws. I promise. 

@glassheartedboy

The Four Children

The Passover Haggadah speaks of four children: the wise, the wicked, the simple, and the one who does not know how to ask

The wise child asks: What form does the hatred of our people take? And you shall answer them: There they called us capitalists, here they call us communists. To some, we are Middle Eastern foreigners, to others, the whitest of white. We are miserly aristocracy and/or beggars on the street, we are whatever is convenient to hate. We are always on trial. We never know what for.

The wicked child asks: What have you done to deserve all of this hatred? And you will answer them: Being a people is no crime by any metric worth considering. And there is nothing more my birthright than refusing to bow down.

The simple child asks: What is this? And you shall answer them: We are so much more than a memory of history. We dance even as the glass shatters. We know pain as thick as honey and we know happiness as sweet, we are, and always remain, Solomon’s riddle and the answer to Samson’s. We stand as angels. We are no ghosts.

And for the child who does not know how to ask You will tell them: Look, my dear, this is your birthright. The wind howls softer than you. We have known so many unmarked graves, but still, we name the living. There is nothing to a home but a family and books and I swear to you, my child, that the Alef-Bet will form the words even when your tongue stumbles.

@glassheartedboy

Laughter/Trembling

“Judaism lives in the space between laughing and trembling”

We have always laughed in the face of death, hidden the way sobs heave,

No, darling, it’s just a belly laugh

In every generation a new Haman, complete with stupid headdress

And isn’t (that) the best punchline

The final laugh?

I can name myself in every language I have blotted yours out of

Isn’t this sweeter than wine?

@glassheartedboy