The Women Gather at Biala River at Night

Light sheds its skin in the poplars,

    Earth’s soldiers wielding the dark, bats emerging

like machinery along the branches, a trick of the eyes,

    and still the river is a cantor, singing.

Once, in a holy city, all around me the women wept,

    craning their perfumed necks,

hooked fisheyes swelling in birdless light.

    Once, blood glimmered on the rocks here

in meager testimony. Not here, but inside here,

    within the cities within a story, soft framework

where loneliness flowers. Here, I go to the women, take

    forgiveness from their hands, drill

the bullet-sized hole in my head to receive

    the light in its endless repetition.

Once, light brushed the hair of my dead aunts as they bent

    to kiss their siddurs on the other side of the drought.

How their bodies grew wet as eels gathering

    underneath a sentence, mouthing gibberish,

an engine refusing to shut off, and inside,

    what God will do when I die.