AMERICAN JEWISH SONNET (PAIR)

(September 2023) I couldn’t convince anyone in my family to come with me to temple, so I went alone to Rosh Hashanah service, sat in the back behind an elder wet coughing, gathering phlegm with each hack like he might hawk one. And I thought, These are my people. Marled yarn of dark curls knitting, variegated like a blanket from above. I smile at the Jewish mothers walking their Jewish sons down the aisle to the bathroom. Body slotting into familiar rhythms of response and call, rising to tippy toes, small knee bends and bows. I rattle with the shofar’s bosom breach, small man on the bimah– tekiaaaaaahhhh– singing sobs and staccato bursts, this strange sound my bones know. Wake up (year and lands and cycles and time and us and us and us)!

(September 2025) They all came this time because Sol’s bar mitzvah’s in April and shit’s getting real. No sweats I said, so we sit center left in clothes that dig, hard pants. Recorded orchestra pumped in and cantor Donna that god damned diva, playing new arrangements so when we try to sing along the notes go flat, cut short, wrong. I crane curved neck for agony mirror–how to tell who haunts this elder’s bowing shoulders, the resting hollow of this Jewish mother’s dense brow? Who do you carry? do you worry? do you mourn? Who lives and dies outside the lines of your us? I scan the Mishkan Hanefesh– sanctuary for the soul, “control f,” seeking: we. We receive it (your love), we lie down and rise up, we bow, we gather, we address, we bear (witness), (how do) we respond, (if) we see ourselves embedded, (but if) we forget, (both) we and our world may perish, (may) we never lose (your love), we pray.