Katherine Orfinger

 

 

Among the Bitter Herbs

How can I praise You
when singing Dayenu
is not enough?

Rote four questions recited for the ages, but
those most urgent left unanswered, as if

scrawled on some cast-off recto, smeared
with all Your most holy regrets. The luxury of silence

or the thunder of plans that will die on our lips:
Next year in Jerusalem! But how

will we get there
when the orange on the Seder plate is rotting?

Its halves will yield no mimosa, no movement,
no miracle. Too soft, its segments splatter the open doorway,

where we hope against all else that the phantasm Elijah will
enter because that is what we were told.

I cloak myself in your starry abode,
a tallis of darkness around my shoulders.

What can I do when singing
Dayenu is not enough?

 

It Does Not Matter (For E.)

I imagine strange bodies
unwilling touch, the nexus

of the subsequent shroud of shame,
the dull twist of a bright weapon,

the body reduced to
“I’m fine,” rictus, but you don’t know

I know how badly it hurts
when some anonymous sin

hurtles up to derail you, like
collapsing onto pavement, voices

questioning, “Have you been
sleeping?” around the edges of your selfhood like

you’re supposed to know. I know
you’ve been busy reducing yourself

to crimson wounds, haphazardly sewn closed
by morning. Uncover

the altar of your chest, remove
all keepsakes of his sin

from that sacred place so close
to the heart, and

erase his name
from your reflection.

It does not matter
if you have been good.

 

Without a Name

On the eternal banks
of a boundless river,
Asherah finds my soul on her knees,
sick with remembering.
Her ragged palms plum-bruised, unable
to open, let go. She rasps, her throat tarnished
by the deathly fingers of a pressing past,
a scarlet collar as if marking her for slaughter.

Even so, I have fastened
my life in some semblance of balance,
the tenuous bond between
what I wish had happened and
the angular reality served to me
on the satiny crests of another soul-sick morning.
I want to trace the secrets of my fingertips
along the veins of the river, unspooling
the shroud of violence that clings to me
so many memories, like algae
washing from my callused hands.

On the eternal banks
of a nameless river,
my soul finds Asherah, and we listen
to the stillness, knowing we are expected
to forgive, but for now, it is enough
to see the water
rushing past my feet.

 

Terumah (Offering)

Shackled to communal memories,
your name is the gag
that forces me

forward while I try to gaze back, flinching
at every shadowed whisper, how the wind teases
the ferns and the palms and the dust motes

sizzling before the Eternal Flame,
a monument to the arrogance of holiness,
so unlike anything else that could be called pure.

I was not called upon.
I was commanded.

The finery of my body,
much more godlike than any lump of silver
stripped of context and yes,

I am hysterical, at the way you tarnished
the very essence of my soul,
and yes, keep and remember is

a single command, but the language
forced into my mouth
has me spitting the scarlet syllables of forgiveness

at your holy feet, until
everyone can see my hips
are nothing but bitter and bony.

I am no offering.
I will not please.

 

God as Eternal Flame, Woman as Temptress
(After Nikki Marmery’s novel Lilith)

An apricot tree,
alone and erect in paradise.
Tender saffron fruits, golden in the warmth
of the Eternal Flame, their skin gives way
to heady juice, yields to my curious, wandering touch.

I needed no lipstick.
I wore no rouge.
You delighted in me as I was,
among the gods and the trees,
until hunger slithered from my throat,
all garnet and ghastly with want.

Summer bewitched my body.
Naked and brazen, I peacocked through paradise.
Your sons gathered to whisper of sin,
their voices staggering
in magnitude and complicity.

It no longer surprises me
that man’s wishes
often masquerade as gods.

Who is like You,
among women forgotten? Whose
is this body, both serpent and sage?
And who among us wishes
to make the impossible choice:
to keep dreaming in a world
longing to be repaired, or to look away
and let the whole thing crumble?

 

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