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Poetry

Like a baker, swaddling the juice and heft of apples in pastry,
I want my mouth to cradle the delicious name of God.

Kissing the Torah, I breathe the dust that has lain on the name of God,
imagine ink on my indrawn breath.

I will dream myself into the body of a bee. I will enter the honeycomb
and sip the scent of blackberry in the golden name of God.

I will open the windows of my house so the name of God can write itself
on my walls with pigment of breeze and pollen, with stylus tipped in light.

If my heart were an amber room, I would inscribe the name of God
over its doorways, and once a year I would flame it down to spicy smoke and oil.

When I was a girl, I drank from the chalice and felt the wine’s heat travel
down my bones, each pressed grape’s drop alit with the secret name of God.

And later, full of grief, I let a woman press hard against my spine and felt
life rushing again through my body, releasing the clenched-up name of God.

I want the name of God to frost over my sight, to loop the tides to my ears.
How can I be frightened with those vowels in my lungs, flaring like paper lanterns?

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The Image archive is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

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