Photograph of my Mother in Havana with Rabbits
Kodachrome: little red skirt,
a frown that I have
plucked
from her face. Rabbits like
baby’s breath.
She’s not old
enough to
figure out how diaspora cuts
a path across
her
tender
tongue.
1937: it’s too early to get to the United States,
so Cuba is temporary. It was never this
warm.
Really, this could have been
anywhere,
but sometimes
I think Havana only exists
in wedding photographs.
& then I remember
that their synagogue was seized
to show flicks:
a projector where the
chuppah once was.
Unroll the Torah,
unroll the screen.
“I heard G-d moved into the movie palace last week.”
All this to say,
I share one tongue out
of the four of my grandmother’s.
I, waterlogged Hydra: cut off
one more &
brand the stump: I cannot count
how many
I’ve lost.
I only know
how to speak
in order not to drown.
It’s funny, mi madre learned
the finer points of English
from the Mickey Mouse Club.
It’s been over half a century & still
no promise of return. We cannot
smuggle ourselves back in
the way they smuggled out
my grandfather’s
medical school diploma.
Today, my mother sends me a text:
“I miss the rabbits.”
The King of Swords
in the Rider Waite tarot
looks a hell of a lot like T. E. Lawrence at the
Battle of Aqaba in 1917.
Not real Lawrence,
of course.
1962 Peter O’Toole Lawrence.
Tall, dashing, & making eyes at Omar Sharif.
(There are no women in this movie.)
You love him is not
a question.
I fear him is not
an answer.
(Then why do you weep?)
Can you lionize
a dozen gazes across the sand & call it righteous?
What is bloodlust but
distortion in a mirror,
a motorcycle, or a molten desert?
Here is a whole history of violence
in a glance.
It’s only as daring as a jump
cut from blown out match
to sunrise.
Those lips have
far better uses than carving up the heavens with desire.
He wants all of it. Good G-d,
all of it. Call it arrogance or
hunger, but anatomy isn’t divinity.
If nothing is written,
then it is time to ride out roaring
on all fours
into the
dark.
Someday, I will walk into the desert & never come out
again.
Marilyn Schotland is a poet from Philadelphia currently studying for a BA in History of Art at the University of Michigan. She is the recipient of a Hopwood Award and a nominee for Bettering American Poetry. Recent and forthcoming publications can be found in Cotton Xenomorph, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Five:2:One, and Tinderbox Poetry Journal.