The Women Gather at Biala River at Night
Light sheds its skin in the poplars,
Earth’s soldiers wielding the dark, bats emerging
like machinery along the branches, a trick of the eyes,
and still the river is a cantor, singing.
Once, in a holy city, all around me the women wept,
craning their perfumed necks,
hooked fisheyes swelling in birdless light.
Once, blood glimmered on the rocks here
in meager testimony. Not here, but inside here,
within the cities within a story, soft framework
where loneliness flowers. Here, I go to the women, take
forgiveness from their hands, drill
the bullet-sized hole in my head to receive
the light in its endless repetition.
Once, light brushed the hair of my dead aunts as they bent
to kiss their siddurs on the other side of the drought.
How their bodies grew wet as eels gathering
underneath a sentence, mouthing gibberish,
an engine refusing to shut off, and inside,
what God will do when I die.
Copyright Credit: Carlie Hoffman, "The Women Gather at Biala River at Night" from When there was light. Copyright © 2023 by Carlie Hoffman. Reprinted by permission of Four Way Books, www.fourwaybooks.com.
Source: When there was light (Four Way Books, 2023)