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Poetry || Submissions Poems from The Startled Land by Rochelle Mass
The Golem The Golem, an artificial man made of clay, is brought to life by the fears and anxieties of the persecuted Jew wandering where the Prague Ghetto stood. The magic of the Hebrew alphabet - Shem (name of God) and Emet (truth) - infuses instincts and impulses into the base clay. They used to sell pickled cucumbers from stinking vats, waffled biscuits now flat as lace and round as Czech crowns are pressed over sweet powder. The vendors in aprons and caps serve from kiosks with patterned awnings. The streets continue to run uphill to the castle which, they say, has more than a hundred towers. I take a biscuit and walk toward the spires of the Hradcany fortress still soaked in morning mist. Someone brushes by me pulls to one side, warms the bowl of his pipe in his hand. I turn toward the tobacco stream, he keeps on, pulls his sleeve. The hood of his jacket falls over one shoulder as it did then. I call out, my shoes clap the cobbles. He leaves Celetna Street as Kafka did every morning, goes through the Town Square. Fruit rots, urine pools in a small alleyway. He’s slight a slim back, dark eyes. I smell beer and river mud as he rushes ahead of me. I call out again. A woman in torn shawls holds a child to her breast. Another huddles over a paper cup, hands pointed in prayer. The man presses on. At the first arch he turns left, turns again. I taste bitterness. He begins to run. Turn to me - I beg. I raise my hand, a paw now, gnarled. My feet thump after his green coat. I hiss at his back. Emet - it was him. Shem I implore. In the name of God. Memories burn me. At the next turn he is gone. Clay and water and mud and blood mixed in wax - I howl for the man he was and for who I would never be. EmetI wheeze, Shem I wail and crouch along the cobbles like a gypsy child. At the edge The night before I dream that I don’t get to the hospital in time. I’m disgusted with myself. The scenes replay till I get the point: my husband is scheduled for urgent cardiac surgery. I pull off my sleep shirt, pack some things. I realize I’ve never been so aware of the space around my husband as I sit amongst families - both Arabs and Jews - who bring baskets, bottles, thermoses, fill the ward with heavy smells. They make the place restless, bring in wind and rain. Their concern shuffles mine. Two explosions in Um el Fachem the day the ambulance takes us from Afula, three hours to Jerusalem, then a day later another bombing on King George Street in the city center. It’s between seasons now, could have been the start of spring, but the fighting has blocked the release spring usually brings. I can’t imagine coming out of this, the war and the hospital have become the same zone. I am in a struggle I can’t unravel. I have come with a beginner’s mind. Don’t want to let go of what I don’t know, of what I’ve never known before. I don’t want to see him carried into the center of the ambulance, wish we could turn it all back. Not let the stretcher get pulled into the hospital where strangers block elevators, empty beds wheel past. There’s no answer as to how this began. I have to learn new terms; I’ve lost something, I know. I place a shaking hand on his leg. Floor 5: a Monet to the left of the elevators: familiar wild poppies like those feathering the slopes at the Gilboa Mountains behind my house. During the operation, I find a bench in a garden, try to disregard anything but the hills of Jerusalem. They ask nothing of me, just wait as I do. I try to get to lofty thoughts, but mostly mumble bits of prayer. My voice is small. I'm scared, but strangely patient. I walk up and down the same path. When the Surgeon tells me that the operation has succeeded, I look for the wall and press myself into it. I listen to him but only hear that it is over, that everything is fine. Now, recovery is crawling into new life, leaving behind the old, a self-digesting birth, to the pace of explosions from Jenin twelve kilometers down the road. Two army bases with tanks and a helicopter pad occupy our village while the space around my husband fills with compassion. He’s a bypass veteran now. In a month, they promise me, I won’t be able to gather these details place them into a plot. I’m sure I’ll never forget that, for a moment we stood at the edge of the grave knew how bare that ground was. Unlike pinata balls When I opened the door this morning, bees flocked in, are now pressed against the panes in the kitchen, crawl along the table’s edge. I tell this to my neighbor who shouts across the hedge: bees belong to their keeper. Not sure what this means, I think back to when I was ten, when I walked into a farmer’s field, stepped on nests that burst with wasps. Unlike pinata balls that spill out gifts when struck, wasps swarmed, first attacked my lips. Then pierced my neck. I didn’t move – the screams turned howls. My parents drank juice on the farmer’s lawn not knowing I was beating off stings gone into my legs and ankles till I couldn’t shout nor move. Finally his dog yapped so much the farmer took a stick, came to check for trouble. I lay on their daughter’s bed, lips like balloons. Could only move my fingers a little. They rubbed me with a baking soda paste that hardened held me till the pain reached the surface, then passed. That’s what I think of today as I watch bees that have been in my house since morning, eroding the relief of where I live. I walk out into the still grass - hoping they will follow. They have stained the yellow mood summer has brought. I should have gone to China She remembers when they found the chair in that special shop in Zichron, bought the fabric with the roses, had the Russian in Afula renew the stuffing, when the basket was full of plump figs from the tree in the back. The walls were smudged then, crowded with amateur paintings. She added more till it was uneven with seashore, flowers and a startled portrait of someone’s mother. She touches this plate, that basket, taking one not the other. The pile at the door grows. She pulls at her shirt, frantic to find things that are truly hers, runs her hand along the table she had set, served, cleared and wiped a thousand times for him. She squeezes her hands round her crystals, amethysts, slices of quartz. I’ll leave them for a while, they should stay here, remind him that I was, that they were mine. From the shelf, over the stove, she takes a pot, and a square pan shaped for making dutch pancakes, puts it near the door. That stool from India, Shula brought it for me - she slides it under the chair with the velvet roses. The knife I use for mangoes: she opens one drawer after another till she finds it with the wooden spoons and cake servers. You are like your mother he snarls, she hisses: God save us from being like your parents. * Two rooms wait for her - white as linen. Nothing hanging yet or placed in the corner for her husband to straighten, frown at. The neighbor’s boy takes the chair and the stool from India off the truck. Dates roll on the open earth, the stench of new rot as they reach the steps of her apartment. She shakes her head: I should have gone to China, taken the train to Vietnam, stayed over in Australia. Gone to the fortune-teller in New Delhi. Waiting is brutal Sirens seared the air. Soldiers made no announcements, just darted nervously – and the line of cars behind us stiffened. The officer near us removed his cap, wiped his face didn’t look our way. Traffic lights continued green to red to green - a monotonous roll I tried to count, tallying my fear, but couldn’t turn it into meditation. Trapped in our cars, we gaped at soldiers swiveling guns. Tension stretched round us. We repeated empty phrases not remembering when we arrived, how long we’d been there. Time hung, crumbled into another hour. Vague and confused we craved diversion, dazzled by the panic of what might happen. Night fastened a shadow to every form. Canadian born, Rochelle Mass grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia, and moved to Israel in 1973 with her husband and two young daughters. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she is the author of two previous collections of poetry; her work has appeared in US, Canadian, and Israeli publications. She is a translator and the editor of Kibbutz Trends a biannual journal of contemporary issues. Get The Startled Land though BookSurge, or visit Rochelle's home page at her publisher, windriverpress.com More poems at Ariga from The Startled Land by Rochelle Mass: The Startled Land -- I came to join the women -- Hands on a gun Today's Situation
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