Reading Bruno Schulz on Rosh Hashanah

I Tekiah

In one blast, a man answers with all he has,

his barrel chest outlined against

an everlasting light, a kiss to a ram’s horn

and we are called by that guttural song

—who shall live by fire or sword,

mountains that still dance,

and us, our feet together, bowing,

chanting, churning, hearing a voice

that calls us to our desert roots,

fire to ashes, and ashes to earth—

a man standing alone on a corner with nothing

but a small loaf of sawdust in his pocket,

asks himself, do we all live

to burn the things we love most?

A question formed in this scratched language, this sand

in my cupped hands, trickling through my fingers—

I wash my face in its gravel-sound, let

it skim me over the desert where we were born

in forty years of walking, born and reborn,

subdividing and creating, gathering sparks

that flicker, fly, ignite, a wind

that spins me into a funnel dance,

a new mind found in this long day, a new life

inside me, and this sound of sand,

pushed by wind, pushed by song,

a shofar cry that rises like a single shot echoes,

like a flock of cranes formed in the heart

of a peace sign and grazing the tops of trees,

spiraling into an open sky, tilting me

toward the face of God

with the smallest prayer:

next year,next year,

always

next year.

III T’ruah

Hold me, hold me—

hold my legs together, staunch

each surge, every secretion,

this current that grips me

as the petals of my body open

and close over hers. Please God. Please.

What is this language, this thread

of red, this leak of life imprinted

on my thigh, a scarlet tattoo? Please.

My head fills with ink, my body

with the dredges of the night;

they swim in me still.

Are You listening?

Lay with me. Moon your hand across

my dreams, go ahead—dance,

dance the stars out of the sky. Let

it be tomorrow and she

still inside me.

~

Where am I? Has night become day?

I touch the cruelty of a new sun, here,

curled on a bathroom floor, a broken

ring around the life

that has slipped from me.

She

is perfect—a simple gift

in this pool

of blood, no bigger

than my palm, toes and fingers,

translucent but ten,

intact. Daughter

of a thousand fragments

their rainbow shards

filling me, falling

into my womb. In this moment I am

Mother. Please. Breathe

into her. Set your lips over hers and breathe:

breathe her your honey, breathe her your milk,

set yourself under her tongue.Please.

~

Where am I? Hardtack and water, empty

day, a broken ring—

I’ll count to ten, but

still, this bathroom is empty,

breathless, moments

move by on heavy feet, God,

I am the bride,

waiting; I am under a dark

canopy; bundled myrrh between my breasts,

hands hennaed but, truth: I did not pray

for us; I didn’t pray at all.

I lay here on linoleum, fasted,

even as my body filled

with burn. Please.

I’ll sing now the hymns

no one has ever heard. God,

I will offer you up her

translucent toes, her teeth buds,

the cascade of her future curls. I ache

to catch your flames,

their energy and their rage,

drop some of those burning

worlds on my tongue—

(Those, too, I can smother on a cold floor.)

Make room for us and our animal

existence. I will

kneel here on the pitted

earth, fit every shard

where do I put the small shoes

of my unborn children?

IV Tekiah Gedola

Here a shul bathroom, like another room remembered—

water now cupped in two hands, held to my face,

melting the salt and sand finally from my eyes.

At the shofar blast I lift my head, a deer in darkness

startled alive. Today, even the keruvim

have given up androgyny, turned themselves to two

sexes, entwined, wings circled forward to shield and comfort

each other, for you are beloved before Hashem—

Yes, you—the woman, and it was today

He told Sarah she will have a son, nurse him

well from a wrinkled tit, Hannah mumbling on the stairs,

and Rachel weeping, kneeling, forehead to dust,

aleinu li’shabei-ach l’adon hakol,

all gone and she’s alone in a tomb. The womb

prepares. The candles are lit. We hold all that is sacred

in our palm of air, strike our own thigh,

then buck and slap together, nothing on our minds

but the pleasure that hides behind the walls, scratching,

scratching us into a moment of sparks,

where new worlds are really born. Cells

divide as someone soft and sacred

grows round. This is where we start over.

Schulz telling stories in a classroom, late nights

writing, tossing embers on a page with abandon,

or later in a library deciding which beloved books to burn.

My body here, heavy, preparing to start again.

The Messiah handed to a stranger and lost forever

in one moment on a street corner. We all begin

and we all end, we murmur over the desert,

like the sand itself whispers before the arrival

of dew, of the smallest prayer: maybe

next year, next year in Jerusalem.