Erin Mizrahi: Desert Kaddish
Photo: Joanna C. Valente
In a Grief
I want to be the kind of person who can wear overalls
do you know what I mean
I mean I want to be unburdened
I’m talking about a loosening
do you know how to ask for what you want
or are you still learning
I’m still learning too
I am thinking of all the ways to unmake a poem
and all the names I’ve attached to grief
you know the way we place cut flowers
at the center of our homes
and talk of only the color
never the widening cut beneath
I mean water does not heal everything
is there even time to sit with your grief
to be soft to it
I’ve been thinking of the capitalistic logic of grieving
that it must be made productive
that you will erase your own labor in your healing
I remember learning about the Primogenitor
in my freshman psych class
the first father killed his male children
so he would never be unseated
but the surviving sons eventually killed him
I think they also ate him because they were grieving
and that loss too needed to be productive
when I am in a grief, I run to water
throw my whole self in
I wonder what it means to even teach a poem
I say all language is a living thing
how will you call it to you
what if the primogentior loved his sons
gave them soft things
fed them mangos and held them close
what if he saw their growth as a kind of magic
In all of this I can’t help but wonder like where are all the women?
and maybe we fucked up somewhere
in our understanding of growth
that the fissures we open are not going to disappear us
unless our desire is to disappear
I am in search of whatever fruits when its forgotten
there has already been so much violence in survival
Desert Kaddish
My father said Kaddish
in the Negev
at the foot of some ancient grave
It took me by surprise
The sudden burst of prayer
The intimacy of mourning
Later I realized
He was reciting for his father
and as we stood there
baking beneath the sun
with only stillness and cicadas as witness
I wondered
just how many fathers
has this desert swallowed whole?
Erin Mizrahi is an emerging poet and teacher based in New York, as well as the co-founder and host of Cobra Milk, a monthly reading and music series featuring emerging and established writers.
