Golem Has a Career Crisis
How can I be sure I’m the best one for the job, a statue hewn from rose quartz, a slab for nose, a chunk for body, two lips unable to speak or eat but able to see those from whose veins and arteries blood flows like a round of tides— restless at every entrance and off ramp a […]
The Eustachian Tube of a Golem
I learned to think with my eyes speak with my hands in the shimmery violet and reddish black of the evening light the sound of Aramaic wending along the Eustachian tube of my middle ear filled with voices of inanimate friends— table, lamp, pictures—all company keepers and what it means to forge a bolt on […]
The Golem Muses Upon the Wonder Rebbe of Prague
In my dreams, he stretches far or holds the hand of shadows lags behind as I try to catch up my Rebbe of Prague who installed me inside the Hall of Justice as immortal as the iridescent cataract of hatred a protector and shield of the people an incantation called to order by a syncopated rhythm twenty-two letters cascading inside the […]
Golem Looking At the Super Moon
You swooped in to take a close-up the first time in more than sixty years by my count, no time at all. Maybe you couldn’t believe the wind whispering in your soft ear had to see with your own two eyes what the ruckus was all about golden parachuted down to earth a super moon curious to see if she could recognize anyone from the old neighborhood. Slivers […]
A Dark Force is Calling All Cars
Snap out of it, I told my golem friend. There are more important things than dwelling in the past perfect, no need to cry over spilled chicken soup nor hunger after latkes with sour cream. Love comes in different varieties, some as easy as heating up a can of soup, but you are my own recipe— I appeal to your higher […]
Magic Trick Toss
Before I could subscribe his ears to the terracotta soothings of past times, I tried to cheer his decomposed spirits, played around with a bronze coin saved in my pocket and etched with an etrog, a magic trick toss of heads lost or tails, then so amazed my fetching one from his nose, ears, beneath his feet […]
This Too Crazy World
Before he uplifted buildings from their foundation the golem demanded to know the truth, for he had grown way beyond his britches and forsooth was capable of anything weirdo, which is why I let him in on my dark secret– didn’t need for him to be a surrogate, a cork stopper for my long dead […]
Forest in the Trees
Along Leona Canyon, it’s past time for dog walkers to crowd the trail, we head out, hills greener from rain, a private consult between me and my partner-in-crime from the thirteenth century, who’s startled by a collection of oak balls, withered and dead on arrival; he thinks maybe it’s a burial site, a mass castration; I shake my […]
That Time of the Month
He expands in my pocket like a tampon filled with blood. He’s getting bigger and stronger, beats his way out of my purse. Now there’s a hole in the leather, wallet and credit cards fall out; I bend down and pick up everything, wrestle him into the passenger seat and snap the belt. He starts crying. […]
Elmo, My Golem
He slinks around in a navy-blue hoodie and sweatpants, black leather gloves pulled over his hands to hide several missing digits, my fault for not shaping five good fingers from the left-over cheese and crackers. Now he looks like Elmo from Sesame Street, only no red fur, and not as cheerful. I’d hoped for him […]