Originally published January 21, 2007
When I write with biblical myth, I usually prefer to focus on brief asides, events and characters mentioned almost in passing – it leaves more room for invention.
I read one such poem in Albuquerque a few years ago:
Birth of Dan: Bilhah’s Story
“Consort with Bilhah, that she may bear
on my knees and that through her
I too may have children.”
– Rachel to Jacob, Genesis 30.3
Breath. Rachel’s breasts holding
my back, her legs close
around mine. Long, slow pulls
of air. Single syllables escape
my lips while my belly stretches to release
Rachel’s son. We move together
closer than sex. The pain isn’t one
I can find words for. It is not like spasm,
not like a blow. It is not like.
What I can tell is Rachel’s hands
gripping my elbows. She loved me first,
so I followed her, and bear her child
far from home in this land Jacob calls
promised. She loves me still, though she
was bartered to Jacob and barters
for him. What is he? Only seed.
Rachel is wind. I know her.
She may betray me
easy as her husband. Now we rake
together, fierce as entropy.
First published in The American Poetry Journal
I later learned that one member of the audience had responded to the poem by saying that she didn’t think the poet knew how irreverent the poem was. It was an interesting comment – not because she thought the poem irreverent, but because she saw something else in it that made her question whether the irreverence was intentional.
Since childhood, the fallibility of biblical heroes has been a strong part of their appeal to me – Moses throwing temper tantrums, Jacob tricking his family out of their property and blessings. If our highest role models can be so indecent and undignified, I thought, surely I can be pious without being perfect?
My sense of piety is a far cry from the view that to be pious is to follow the letter of religious law. But there is a kind of delight in knowing that faith can speak to faith, even for those who find it in an utterly different form.
– Sari
COMMENTS
Editor
Sari Krosinsky lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with her partner and two cats.
She received a B.A. in religious studies and a M.A. in creative writing from the University of New Mexico. Her poems have appeared in Poesia, Pebble Lake Review, The American Poetry Journal, Arsenic Lobster, Verse Daily, and others. Fiction Editor
Leslie Fox lived in Central America during her formative years and in New Mexico since the mid-70s – before it was cool.
She writes novels, short stories, plays, screenplays and creative nonfiction. Some of her short fiction has appeared in The Medical Muse, red. a journal of arts, Earth’s Daughters and Earthships: A New Mecca Poetry Collection. She has a M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of New Mexico.Art Editor
Dianne Schlies is a practicing artist and has taught studio art since 1986. She received her M.F.A. from SMU at Dallas, Texas in 1990. She has studied or worked with David Bates, Mel Bochner, Squeak Carnwath, Harmony Hammond, Ed Harris, Joyce Kozloff, Mary Ellen Mark, Duane Michals and Robert Rauschenberg. Schlies presently teaches Drawing and 2-D Design in Albuquerque, New Mexico.