M by Dale M. Kushner
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Marieke, the Netherlands, 1940
I was seven months pregnant when troops crossed our border. The dread hours spelled the end of tomorrows. Evenings the scent of scythed grass, forest birch blue in the moonlight. As in a dream of halted time, an eternity of engine-drone above the clouds. Wing shadows pinned us to the ground. Stunned breath, certain death. Daniel ran from the woodshed, pine dust in his beard & dragged me from the yard. In the kitchen I sank to my knees. A rabbit was braising in the iron pot. The baby jackknifed in my womb. I saw a vision of my father already in the next world, watching with pity in his eyes. I saw my mother wrapped in a shawl on a footstool, her lips twisted in a bitter smile. Wars aren’t won with prayers, she said. In the evening the baby arrived in a bath of blood. Daniel wept between my legs & carried our dead child into the woods. The clear night sky fed my secret hope I would survive, though along the horizon, flares—the enemy advancing. Later, I learned the baby had been a boy. Daniel blamed the Germans for his death, having forgotten the ugly nights he slammed his anger into me, rough lullaby of his hips pounding mine. I have stopped loving him completely now. Blame that on the Germans, too, I think, grief butchering the last tender morsel of hope. |
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Magdalene, Beata Diletrix Christi
But Christ loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on the mouth.
The rest of the disciples were offended by it and expressed disapproval. They said to him,
“Why do you love her more than all of us?” The Saviour answered and said to them,
“Why do I not love you like I love her?”
—The Gospel of Philip
Wasn’t it you
who led me to the Judean cliffs
removed my shawl, my crimson mantle
making a bed on bare rock?
And it was my hand that fed you olives, cheese from the goat.
It was my fingers that picked the white crumbs from your lips.
It was your shoulder blade I pressed my cheek into, the hollows
beneath your collarbones I licked for salt.
And it was my name you howled
to the circling ravens.
And it was the brow of your head
against my belly, and your tongue
that opened the pleats of my sex.
And it was you, was it not, my Yeshua,
who entered my private house
like any mortal man?
Now the hour of your death has passed
and I am lost
in the in-between place of wide despair
where memory stings like a flock of arrows.
I wait by the tomb, as you have instructed.
Who will return? You
or my invention of you?
But Christ loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on the mouth.
The rest of the disciples were offended by it and expressed disapproval. They said to him,
“Why do you love her more than all of us?” The Saviour answered and said to them,
“Why do I not love you like I love her?”
—The Gospel of Philip
Wasn’t it you
who led me to the Judean cliffs
removed my shawl, my crimson mantle
making a bed on bare rock?
And it was my hand that fed you olives, cheese from the goat.
It was my fingers that picked the white crumbs from your lips.
It was your shoulder blade I pressed my cheek into, the hollows
beneath your collarbones I licked for salt.
And it was my name you howled
to the circling ravens.
And it was the brow of your head
against my belly, and your tongue
that opened the pleats of my sex.
And it was you, was it not, my Yeshua,
who entered my private house
like any mortal man?
Now the hour of your death has passed
and I am lost
in the in-between place of wide despair
where memory stings like a flock of arrows.
I wait by the tomb, as you have instructed.
Who will return? You
or my invention of you?
Mariska, Poland, 1946
I escaped
from a place I never belonged,
a forest of permanent shadows
where I hid among the nameless & forsaken
who claimed me &
hopeless season after hopeless season,
through winter’s blue-lipped days, nights when the open secret of stars
filled me with longing for a childhood
stolen in the late days of autumn,
the last notes of a Chopin mazurka
lifting from Tata’s fingers before the stampede
of boots on the stairs.
Among the birch,
we dug tunnels & slept under a crust
of dirt. From a nest of larks
we pillaged the unborn. Because you fed me
I became one of you; I believed your fate
was my fate. I was loyal to your fear.
Terror
made us legible to each other
& to ourselves.
Our bodies stank like hunted beasts’.
Meanwhile,
the earth orbited
the sun, the moon became
a sad hypothesis. Large countries swallowed smaller countries &
vowels of the old language choked in our throats.
Soldier’s uniforms changed colors, but
we were not saved. Not even
clouds that promised rain did we trust. We wondered
if we would ever be human again. What had
become us, we knew was not us, just as
at the moment of death,
the heart pitifully refuses and quakes
with life.
I escaped
from a place I never belonged,
a forest of permanent shadows
where I hid among the nameless & forsaken
who claimed me &
hopeless season after hopeless season,
through winter’s blue-lipped days, nights when the open secret of stars
filled me with longing for a childhood
stolen in the late days of autumn,
the last notes of a Chopin mazurka
lifting from Tata’s fingers before the stampede
of boots on the stairs.
Among the birch,
we dug tunnels & slept under a crust
of dirt. From a nest of larks
we pillaged the unborn. Because you fed me
I became one of you; I believed your fate
was my fate. I was loyal to your fear.
Terror
made us legible to each other
& to ourselves.
Our bodies stank like hunted beasts’.
Meanwhile,
the earth orbited
the sun, the moon became
a sad hypothesis. Large countries swallowed smaller countries &
vowels of the old language choked in our throats.
Soldier’s uniforms changed colors, but
we were not saved. Not even
clouds that promised rain did we trust. We wondered
if we would ever be human again. What had
become us, we knew was not us, just as
at the moment of death,
the heart pitifully refuses and quakes
with life.
Read Glassworks' Interview with Dale M. Kushner
Follow Dale on Instagram @dalemkushner or on Facebook @Dale M. Kushner
For more information visit: dalemkushner.com
Follow Dale on Instagram @dalemkushner or on Facebook @Dale M. Kushner
For more information visit: dalemkushner.com
