P
Good linens with a fork and knife. We dine
a ritual feast on plates with sour meat.
And next to our inheritance, the wine.
We drink down promises on every street.
Where is your mother’s voice? I heard her praying
as father sprinkled salt upon the bread.
What did He tell you, child of violent …
P
My dog plays in the garden
The phone rings out a sound
I’ve left the door ajar too long
and they are underground.
I organize the bookshelves
the soft and leatherbound
and smile in silence in my home
as they are underground.
I dress in soft pajamas
with laundry strewn around
and I ignore each …
P
Where does the truth go when you speak?
Is it hiding in shelters, breathing and waiting
as strange feet step inside a home?
Did you set it on fire? Has it suffocated
from smoke still breaching down below?
Did you send it lower, down a ladder,
through a spider’s web of concrete walls,
and bury …
P
They moved the garbage bins five houses down
and uprooted every brick on our street
burying water pipes under the bricks
sending the spring water to our sinks.
No one asked me about moving the trash bins
and no one has told them to move them back.
So is this life now?
Five houses down! …
P
God says the price of freedom is blood
in the water and plague in the home and livestock
laying dead in the field and boils
on skin and frogs running wild and pestilence
locusts that herald a wave of famine
and cover the skies with hail and fire
and strangle their days with darkness.
And …
P
a poem by Suzanne Musin
Maybe my soul remembers.
I sit at the table in Egypt
and so will my daughters and so will theirs
and so will I, this year, alone.
Maybe it’s my blood that remembers
the blood of a sacrificial lamb
that marks our doorposts, trusting
the Angel of Death will pass …
P
a sonnet by Suzanne Musin
The blue and blue, the violet-black, the sea
flies underneath a veil of foamy white
and ripples under, over, into me.
I breathe it in and wallow in the sight.
I cannot write a proper shade of blue
or stretched horizons hiding every land
The pattern on the water, always …
P
a poem by Suzanne Musin
The rabbis claim ten plagues, or forty,
two hundred, or more.
I killed a locust myself in the kitchen,
wondering what it meant. Did the locust come
to protect me or am I the one cursed?
We are walking out of Egypt now
and the dough cooked without rising.
Five …
P
a sonnet by Suzanne Musin
Now every night, a thousand creatures fly
From here to there, tonight and night before
So angry that the glass would still deny
Their infiltration through the sliding door
But no! Inside, the terror has begun
As single, flying trespasser appears
In ignorance, believes its victory won
Full breach accomplished; …
