Simeon and Levi went alone among the moaning
streets—think of it: every Canaanite man draped,
groins leaking through their bindings, gangrene
coming for some. The women bite their tongues.
Roll a thousand eyes. Dinah? Skinny after-
thought, do you even bleed? The name of the city
desires you, didn’t Jacob kiss your mother
before Laban’s eyes, didn’t the city see you
enough? Jacob’s silence for you. Your father
breeds the goats on what they see, led his own
father by feel: goatskin, blooded under-
side. A doe looks at the spotted reed. Whelps
a spotted kid or two. So the ox. The ewe. You could
still bear on our knees, like your mother’s slave—
look at her. God looked. The city bled one way
or another, before your brothers took interest.
Your brothers, how many? Two or twelve,
both ways they plundered us. Took us for you.
Emma De Lisle’s recent work is out or forthcoming in West Branch, North American Review, and Denver Quarterly, among others. She studies theology in the work of Adélia Prado at Harvard and is associate editor of Peripheries.
Photo by Bianca Ackermann on Unsplash
