In this Biblical season, "The Yoke" seems a good place to start.
This poem appeared in the wonderful magazine Lilith, in its spring 1999 issue. http://lilith.org/current-issues/page/62/ The same issue featured a second poem by me, to come in a later blog post.
Along with featuring a poem or two, Lilith covers a wide range of topics. Here's how it describes itself: "Independent, Jewish & frankly feminist since 1976, Lilith magazine charts Jewish women's lives with exuberance, rigor, affection, subversion and style." What's not to like? (I'm tempted to adopt those last five qualities as my personal writer's mission.)
"The Yoke" also appeared in the July 1996 issue of the monthly newspaper Psychic Reader, which was published for many years by the Berkeley Psychic Institute, where I first trained as a clairvoyant reader.
The Yoke
Somebody’s
yoke around my neck—
how
can I think about God now
and
what a kvetch he became in Genesis?
He
walked there calling for Adam.
Then
the verses fell down like a ladder on the dirt
smashing
all that had been planted.
Adam
stopped to be yelled at
but
the actual Adam was off somewhere else
dancing
and fornicating with Eve.
About
all the pain and suffering that followed—
was
it worth the neat rows of vegetables,
each
with a picture-name?
I’m
more interested in the snake in the dust
and
the shimmering pyramids.
The
goddess that came before them
shaking
her stiff serpent at the tree.
I’m
as tired of the One Dad God as he was with his trying children.
Let
the cypresses be trees in my hungry city,
let
the dusty roads be my littered streets.
God,
this agreement to plow and to plead—
it’s
enough already, don’t you think?
And
this yoke—take it.
Go on
without me
rearranging
yourself, green into red
into
blue. I feel better already.
I
forgive you too.copyright 1996 Lisa Bernstein (aka Lisa B)