More on: poetry

‘Speak to us of poetry and politics,’ / he said to me from his seat in the audience / as I was on stage.

It is one thing to write an inspirational poem about the raising of Lazarus, from this great distance in time and space, and another to be Lazarus: to be the one who is raised. I think any genuine religious art leads the reader (and presumably the writer) to a place of encounter, an encounter with radical otherness.

Son’s / net-/ works / / veins under / the skin / of the dark / / call / see/ knock! / / a chandelier / glows / in the dark

Hadara Bar-Nadav on praying at Jerusalem’s Western Wall.

I wanted to break down part of the Gospel story. As I see it, it’s not just about the son sacrificing himself and all those dynamics that inform the biography. I wanted to look at the messages in the Gospels that haunt our lives. What would we do in this world with someone who could perform miracles—verifiable, right-in-front-of-your-eyes miracles? It would just blow the top off the joint. But at the same time, I’m sure we’d find some way to commodify it.

How to do it, how hold
in balance

what misses the mark
and what hits it

The first moment
is this moment,
this one right now.

Laughter is one way in which I experience God, and so I want to write about the ways in which I am sometimes lucky to experience the divine, as friend. A friend who makes you laugh out loud, and who makes you weep. I’m a weeper, and that too is a gift from God.

To sing of origins is to set a course
to anoint a present where cows and angels
cowherds and shepherd kings
all shine in heaven’s light

That first morning, I remember
clinging to a table’s edge—
both legs jackhammering the white

linoleum floor tiles—praying for
my benzodiazepine to finally,
finally kick in.