It is said this riff was once a golden tooth
in the mouth of the tzaddik’s illegitimate brother
It is said the space between these two notes
was laced through the angelic combat boot
It is said this chorus was a mythic road-sign,
people closed their eyes passing through it
It is said this bridge linked nothing to nothing and got rocked daily with heavy commuter traffic
It is said this echo was a non-believer
who called his circuitous origin a “soul” –
this chorus was a mythic road
sign – people,
closed their eyes passing through it
is said this harmony was a rain of sweat,
crumbling wall, people hugging empty air
It is said this voice was a bloody mouth
spelling out the Name
on the snow –
a road-sign, chorus
people closed their eyes passing
through
this nigun opens its raincoat
in front of your mirror, so you
never quite know whose
reflection you’re looking at
because of this unusual arrangement
the nigun is never sung
only her lips moved –
as if voiceless
you could go either way
could walk anywhere wanting
and not
we know visions
of the audible –
but the in-
audible?
sun-thoughts across the visor,
improviser
“you have to draw the line somewhere!”
–in the water?
At Jamie Saft’s New Zion Trio Concert Cornelia Street Café, New York
in the flooded base-
ment, cupping water with
your hands, drinking,
singing praise
to the one
in whose image
you’ve collapsed
in whose imitation
the hat went floating
unmanned
peering into some rhythm
less conspiracist than watch-maker
summoning a library
of everything you’ve ever touched
calling on he who you
count on stepping back
every second
stepping back
across,
imploding
could not drown –
some nebulous promise,
too, a rhythm
unmanned but moving
as long as there’s
a word for it
– Jan 2013
what’s being tested isn’t you
but others against
your backdrop;
the opening
into the language of rocks
in your mouth
seventy two rabbis in the room of Greek
did anyone think of translation as reu-
nifying?
(by force?)
was it about ducking all
through the same loophole –
or, really, building a bridge?
– hanging a trapeze –
it may have been around then that we unlearned
our declaratives
everything a question
harmony against what
isn’t you but the backdrop of
others, against
-After Babylonian Talmud, Megillah 9
Jake Marmer is a poet, performer, and author of the poetry collection “Jazz Talmud” (Sheep Meadow, 2012). He frequently contributes to the Forward and Tablet, and has written recently for Moment, Jacket2, The New Vilna Review, and Sh’ma. He is the co-host of North America’s first Jewish poetry retreat at KlezKanada this August 19 to August 25. A doctoral candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center, Jake is writing a dissertation on jazz-inspired strand of improvisational writing.
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