Samuel 6: In Writing

Drop the lights

Take down the walls

Uncover the sky.

Tomatoes ripen--

Seedlings wait to be planted-- 

God pulses through the rising

Vine, through the purpled geranium bud

Through the flower-shaped milk 

Ducts, that fill and ache and drip-- 

Through the cat that prowls its territory

And the fallen leaf that scrapes the floor-- 

The light that breaks through the grid

Of leftover schach

And through the hospital window

Where Ram breathes in his sap rise

Feels the air enter and rush through his wind

Pipe, feels the wind brooding deep

As worldwide people ping

Photos of the sky

To the phone he will not touch. 

Samuel: Chapter 6

 

What do you see 

making its way towards you?

Will you rise

Or will you fall?

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This chapter continues several of the leitworts of the previous chapter, repeating the thematic hand (y'd) and heavy-honor (k'v'd). Yet the root k'v'd, which previously echoed the despairing "honor is lost from Israel" of the defeated Israelites, here gains deeper resonance, stretching back all the way to the Exodus, with Pharaoh's heavy (k'v'd) heart: "Why harden you hearts as Egypt and Pharoah did" warn the Philistine magicians.

And indeed, the Philistines take heed. Now, instead of taking the Ark as they did before, they send it (sh'l'kh)--another leitword, that echoes Pharaoh's sending forth the Israelites. The power of God's hand loosens the human hand. Relinquishin the control they previously celabrated, the Philistines embody their elided shame in forever-gold, offereing it to God. 

Yet the relinquishment is not total: rather, it is a provisinal test. They  free the Ark, placing it on a wagon drawn by two nursing cows, and see if it can override the biological imperative of motherhood to make its way back (the last of the chapter's keywords), rising and fallng to Isralite terratory. This "seeing" is the last remnant of transgresive control, and remains dangerous. The Isralites, overjoyed to see the Ark coming towrads them through the fields, are punished for their casual gaze.

The story which was introduced with the declaration that "God continued to show himself to Samuel in Shilo" closes with a punishment for those who gaze on God unbiddne outside Shilo's confines.    

Samuel 5: In Wirting

Abject

 

No one you

warns

about the shame--

 

the body turned swamp,

turned quicksand --

how the hollows gape

 

every time you walk, every time

you climb. Sliding, sliding,

drown—

 

after breaking, the body

will not seal. Bleed

for a month, three months

 

eternity. The terror

of sitting. Of shitting.

Put ice. Witch

 

hazel. Cry your eyes closed.   

No one warns you

 

how the jointed boat 

pelvis will creak, rock.

leak. How bodies

 

once mended, a ridge

of stitching remains,

 

like a seamed sock

rubbing your shoe.

 

How you can hate

your own stench

 

wash and wash,

and never feel clean.

 

Lord of hosts

Lord of knowings

teach me the multiplicity

 

of this body that opens

and shuts without volition, quivering

like a vibrating string.

 

Lord of endings

beginnings

and thresholds

 

where I lie toppled

eyes fixed upward

curled hands conches

 

feet transforming

back to the tail

that will buy me back my voice.