"Yom Kippur, Bushwick" by Susannah Greenblatt
You are the one who finds the lamb
in the lurch, the dust intolerable.
I am the one who finds your spurs in a curl.
Body shop on the corner: a real die-up.
Cars a herd straight off a cliff.
Every cave was once a door, all glyphed-up.
The sidewalk vigils lit: someone
mourning summer’s blood.
The moon’s a leech. A kid.
Like my ancestors before me
at the five and dime on Moore Street:
a desperado Jew heads east.
Yom Kippur: your leather jacket,
my rattle-body, saguaro-throat.
Do I find myself a haystack?
Four needles in my side?
Up ahead here on the trail: a retired missile.
Gate’s ajar for all you
heirs of prior accident: for all you
hens in the vivero, all your chicken shit.
Hear our sorry palms:
Vacancy. Vacancy is resonant.
Hear our doubled words:
That’s resonance.
That’s hunger and desert air.
And this—above, above—
could be prayer.
Susannah Greenblatt is a writer, filmmaker, and translator from the Spanish based in Brooklyn. She graduated from Wesleyan University in 2016 and currently works as Digital Marketing and Communications Coordinator at Words Without Borders and a contributing writer for WWB Daily. Her work has also appeared in The Columbia Review, Literary Hub, and Ramona: revista de artes visuales. Her short film, La Ciega, has screened in festivals in the US and Canada.
