So happy to have these poems from Dan Rosenberg.
The Golem
has come to your
neighborhood.
The golem
scratches the letters
on his head. He has
the fist of nails.
He scrapes
accidental trenches
in himself.
His gloves
have blood
of their own.
His foot
snaps your azaleas;
a freezing sound.
Pie smells
turn to burnt
smells. There is
trembling.
The golem
will not kill anyone
for you, will not
tie a rope
between man
and child’s body.
Where are your dead?
Where did you get
these bodies?
The golem
will let them rot.
His head tilts back.
There is no
Adam’s apple,
his face does not
crack in the sun.
You want to give
him a book. You
want to touch
his cheek. Don’t.
The golem is
clay baked
and coughed into.
--
Eat the Bones of the World
Eat the bones of the world
like an unnatural mouth
in the tricky posture of opening.
The air stains your breathing
with cow manure smell
on a western wind. So stop.
Be no cattle nor cattle hand.
So eat the radiant bones,
the girding of the world.
In the growth of tailored pines.
In the corner cemetery. The road
cut into the bones of the world
so low you drive level
with the dead. You live
downhill from the dead
but they don’t sing to you.
You live downhill from someone
else’s dead and you must
eat the bones of the world
with your last tooth some day.
Some day with both fists
in a pantomime of giddy fire.
Some day you’ll wake up
in the revenant springtime
and eat the unforgiving bones,
morning to marrow, a dog
who licks the whipping hand.
The Golem
has come to your
neighborhood.
The golem
scratches the letters
on his head. He has
the fist of nails.
He scrapes
accidental trenches
in himself.
His gloves
have blood
of their own.
His foot
snaps your azaleas;
a freezing sound.
Pie smells
turn to burnt
smells. There is
trembling.
The golem
will not kill anyone
for you, will not
tie a rope
between man
and child’s body.
Where are your dead?
Where did you get
these bodies?
The golem
will let them rot.
His head tilts back.
There is no
Adam’s apple,
his face does not
crack in the sun.
You want to give
him a book. You
want to touch
his cheek. Don’t.
The golem is
clay baked
and coughed into.
--
Eat the Bones of the World
Eat the bones of the world
like an unnatural mouth
in the tricky posture of opening.
The air stains your breathing
with cow manure smell
on a western wind. So stop.
Be no cattle nor cattle hand.
So eat the radiant bones,
the girding of the world.
In the growth of tailored pines.
In the corner cemetery. The road
cut into the bones of the world
so low you drive level
with the dead. You live
downhill from the dead
but they don’t sing to you.
You live downhill from someone
else’s dead and you must
eat the bones of the world
with your last tooth some day.
Some day with both fists
in a pantomime of giddy fire.
Some day you’ll wake up
in the revenant springtime
and eat the unforgiving bones,
morning to marrow, a dog
who licks the whipping hand.
--
First Date as Foucault
The pendulum puddles under
her earlobe, the violent swing
saying something. No, it’s
saying no in horizontal thrust,
but the pendulum shaves light
off its curves like a stream of flint.
I can’t look away. As a child
bowling I’d stare at the sheen
on the lanes, the reason for gliding,
halogen light peeled into strips.
And my friends, half-choked
on French fries, slicking finger-
grease into the balls’ three holes,
hurling them for the bang
and bruise, battered wood, the pin
explosion. I understand reaction
now, but still I am still. Afraid
this date will not end well.
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