Poetry: Aviya Kushner

Aviya Kushner (Poetry 1998) is the author of The Grammar of God: A Journey into the Words and Worlds of the Bible (Spiegel & Grau / Random House, 2015). She is an associate professor at Columbia College Chicago and is a contributing editor at A Public Space. Her poems appear widely.
 

HIGHWAY

Driving in the fast line, the left lane,
I finally understand
what it is to say “if I forget thee O Jerusalem
let me lose my right hand,”
let me lose all its abilities, all its little strengths,
and I lose hold of the steering wheel
and the tiny car sways like a rudderless ark
in furious waters.
Someone honks
and then drives on, revengeless,
and I remember that land is not terrible,
no, despite what you warn
us all, Isaiah, nor is the Judaean desert doomed,
but man, that weed, that warrior, that sweetheart,
it is him we are fated to fear, trust, beg, thank –
him, mortal that he is, driving along the plains of earth.

 

ANCIENT HEBREW

How close the villain is to the harp!
Two vowels separate them, just as two small
letters separate the harp from the generous.

Of course no one learns languages like this,
Because it’s considered wrong, ridiculous,
But why that is – that’s what I want to know.
Yes the villain can be as mesmerizing as the harp,
Yes evil can seem generous, in clever disguise. Yes all
of them have their own rhythms, and all are close:
Oh who has not felt the tingling of mischief and crime,
sweet music of generosity and still, the lingering pluck
of am-I-evil, am-I-bad-beneath-it-all?

I am giving and villainous and musical.
In my body I carry clarity and crime and the harp.

—

“Ancient Hebrew” was originally published in Salamander.