Blackbird Archive
← v5n1, Spring 2006
Poetry · Volume 5, Number 1

Charm Against a Broken Tongue

Jehanne Dubrow

When words erased the need for ink,

blank pages fluttered like a winding sheet

and mamaloshen crumbled into dust.

Translation. The mother tongue smelled of a room:

unopened prayer shawls pinned upon the wall

like linen butterflies. Aleph and bet

took wing as raven-messengers, letters

with claws too blunt to tear into the world.

To touch the dead is treyf. To touch dead verse,

what then? What of the Edelshteins who shout

their poetry in languages that fade

in direct light? This Hall of Oddities—

the yad points toward a book that isn’t there,

a silver finger gesturing at night.

languagereligionhistorytranslation
Jehanne Dubrow

Jehanne Dubrow is the author of two books of nonfiction, most recently Taste: A Book of Small Bites (Columbia University Press, 2022); nine poetry collections, most recently Wild Kingdom (Louisiana State University Press, 2021); and a book of creative nonfiction, throughsmoke: an essay in notes (New Rivers Press, 2019). Her poems, creative nonfiction, and reviews have appeared in Poetry , New England Review , Colorado Review , The Southern Review , and Blackbird , among others. She is a professor of creative writing at the University of North Texas. Photo by Cedric Terrell