This battle

By Emma Rosenthal

forswears
a war based on
lies whispered in the night
in panic stored under pillows
in centuries of fear

this battle invites
the complexity of your existence
the embrace of the one we have been told to hate
love against terror
passion over dominion

this battle affirms
revelation
the rejection of
lies
in thirty second sound bytes
greedy promises
false alliance

this battle implores
we understand the complexion of wealth
the essense of water
the sanctity of land
the wall between neighbors

this battle requires
a fight with open hands
and broken heart
i am not afraid to show you my wounds
nor tend to yours
nor am i afraid of connection
or honest deliberation

this battle commands
diligent study
patient instruction
honors life through righteous living
requires that i do not avert my eyes
that i insist you look at mine

this battle asserts
that i sleep soundly
that i not disturb growing seedlings
worship the simple sacred
the sanctity of skin and blood and bone and sex
wishes tenderness
whispers embracing kindness
imploring me to take you in
deeply

this battle grasps
the intimacy of risk
love: the ultimate rebellion
courage of the unarmed
cup in hand
offering sustenance to those
who would speak ill of us
and do us harm

this battle enlists
the soldier: calling him home
drawing a circle in the sand
together, all of us
no lines and battlefields
no body bags
the smell of death

this battle realizes
the generals will not bring us truth
when they kill you
i must hear the absence of your breath
the silencing of voices never heard
the ashes of flesh untouched
diminished faces never seen

this battle obliges
that we rend our clothes
bow our heads
take in your death as if you were our sister
our lover
our child

this battle demands
we carry you
pressed in a book of poems
the battle cry of hope against the thunder clouds
of bombs and sirens

this battle enjoins
us
bound together
i wipe the tears from your cheek
as if they were my own
holding tightly
you to me
against
the machine
that would take
you
away
from us
forever


© 2004 Emma Rosenthal All Rights Reserved

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My Lover Chimera

By Emma Rosenthal


in the end i am truly nothing to you
less than air
no more real to you than god
your goddess
an intelligent man's calendar girl
my poems your favorite centerfold
i am merely a
holographic image imposed
on your pituitary
the spirit that flies in your window
at night
and is gone when you awaken
my breath no more than the breeze
combing through the curtains
my touch, simply the curtains
dancing against your cheek
my breasts
the polyester pillows
you rest your head upon
(real down makes you sneeze)
my belly no more than the lumps in the mattress
the folds of my sex are the creases
in the sheets
my arms are the blankets that hold you
my sweat is the heat they contain
until you kick them off on a
hot new jersey summer night
My legs are the smooth and even bed posts
my voice
my eyes
my scent
not there
they are the unpredictable
unanswered questions
the truth too dear to compel

what is real between us will never happen
what has truly happened between us
unreal


©2004 Emma Rosenthal All Rights Reserved

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an artists insurrection against impending armageddon
By Emma Rosenthal

we have reached the end of days
if we listen to the generals
the strange interpretation of biblical text
we are approaching armageddon
there is no room for artist in heaven

along with jews and other infidels
we will all burn in a sea of fire
as the generals and soldiers
these crusaders in a war for oil and empire
march through the gates of heaven

how do they envision paradise?
is there any room for imagination
beyond the brilliant justification for world destruction
these ends of days are like a funeral durge
slow measured frightened and beautiful

we march behind the soldiers
in contrast to their naked brutality
we sell flowers on street corners
chant durges on the steps of city hall
paint our forms in chalk on corporate pavement

there is more for us in paradise
than these hollow promises
we cannot march to the drummers of the death knell
i dance to the sounds of the birds and the wind
the crickets whisper to me the direction to take in battle

we fight with paint brushes brooms and sewing needles
reconstruct from the ashes of their bitterness
a sea of transformation splendor majesty
hope against the fear of sky scrapers
and the destruction of the city commons

where can i meet you
will i see you at the library or the marketplace
we have no space in common anymore
each leaf and blade of grass is patented by monsanto
even my own garden isn't mine

in defiance i sow forbidden seeds
hide fugitive artists in my garage
stash implements of self expression behind the tomato plants
hide remedy in soup bowls
sneak books of poetry across the border of forbidden thoughts

let us gather our plows and printing presses
march out our army of artisans, poets philosophers
mothers children the disabled
we shall gather in front of the monuments to corporate monopoly
creative, we shall do more than merely redistribute wealth

let us paint a mural against the bitterness of capital
let us dance with fingerprints upon the freshly polished glass
let us reconstruct deconstruct the corporate structure
let us build a monument to hope from the finest marble
gather our finest sculptors to chisel away the corporate greed

let us create a world of wealth not measured in numbers on digital screens
abundance in the depth of paintings sprawled on canvas in children's art classes
in the prolific dances in newly reclaimed public gardens
in the flowers that bloom organic to meet the paint brushes
in the heart that meets the hands that bridge divides of freeway and distance

the dismantled impositions of capitol and greed
they cannot take you away from me
let us storm the bastille and free those trapped behind stolen opportunities
lost dreams, misplaced hope, false divisions, broken promises
gather the dispossessed and storm the factories of death and theft

let me meet you in the public square after we have dismantled corporate tyranny
taken back our territory granting it to our children in collective perpetuity
we will reclaim this paradise with our hammers and chisels paint brushes keyboards
paint and build and dance and sing through the gates of paradise
an artists insurrection against impending Armageddon



©2004 Emma Rosenthal All Rights Reserved

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i'd like to tear these petals with my teeth
By Emma Rosenthal


i'd like to tear these petals with my teeth
- Li-young Li from the poem irises


i'd like to tear these petals with my teeth
the deadly oleander
not the delicate rose
lemon scented geranium
star jasmine
scarlet hibiscus
peppery nasturtiums
not a scented tea
a gentle bath
an ornate salad

a place to meet you
dance with you
feast with you

it is the poison
i want to mingle with

it is not hope, it is desire
they are not the same
not even cousins

it is fate i wish to tempt

as if there were no consequences
as if the consequences were of no
consequence

as if
devoured
having devoured
having been devoured

i would stand
i would remain
remain standing

touched
untouched

knowing
standing
knowing

i want to tear these petals with my teeth
white oleander
on a summer evening
the breeze through the curtains
that frame the door
the drapery that frames my bed

i lie here devouring petals
singing to the moon
sure that i can hear the moon
singing back
the light as it bounces off
the glass of water
as if the water
on the bedside table
were a lake
the ocean
as if i were
standing
not lying in the dark
standing
by the edge of the ocean
on the beach
on the rocks on the beach
is it the beach in Pasadena
is the the rocks by the sea
on the sea wall in Maine

are the oleander petals
the anemones i tickle
and tickling me back
sting my hand

i wish to tear these petals with my teeth
and having tempted fate

remain touched
untouched

as it the oleander
not mine
had not been ambushed
were still intact
as if i had not committed the first violent act
had not stolen the petals

i did not plant the oleander
would not have planted
not have allowed
would not have nourished
the poison to grow

not in the view of my bedroom door
the door that takes me from my bed
into the garden
the garden dust on my feet mingling
with the flowers on my sheets

i long to tear these petals with my teeth
tear the tears as they stain the pillow
tear the tears as i tear the petals
tear the pillow
tear the rocks
the sand the ocean
there is no beach in pasadena

only the moon and the arroyo seco
and oleander
oleander
i sip a tea as i court sleep
the curtains defy the heat
dancing in the timid breeze

i want to tear these petals with my teeth


©2004 Emma Rosenthal All Rights Reserved

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Good Germans
By Emma Rosenthal


I: 1969
"Good Germans," my father muttered as we walked from door to door petition in hand, collecting signatures trying to secure an end to the war in Vietnam. 1969. Some yelled at us to "go back to Russia!" -a strange refrain the accusation of communism mixing with the juxtaposition of the genocide that first brought his mother to these shores. Others politely said they didn't want to make waves, attract the attention of the authorities, cause a problem.
These were the "good Germans"

"What do you mean Daddy, how do you know they are German?"
I asked, not eleven years old, not yet having learned the nuances of ethnicity (these things must be learned.)

"They aren't German, Em"

"Why did you say they were good Germans?"

Good Germans, the ones who knew but said they didn't, 1942 but said nothing, did not participate in the holocaust, did not profit from slave labor did not serve in the army, just silent. Good Germans did not attract the attention of the authorities, pretended not to know, saw Jewish girls, outside the camp, walking to the factory singing.

See, they are happy.

Good Germans, not worried about the smoke, the stench. "We didn't know." Good Germans.

Jew to Jew this is not a compliment.


II: 1977

I sit in a hotel lobby in Berlin waiting for my sister to come down from the room A day of walking, shopping, museums, the insipid kindness of strangers giving me directions.

I am surrounded.

1977. Every man in the lobby is my father's age and German, peaceful, still, Bach, not Wagner playing over the lobby hush, a place for guests, tourists, businessmen niceties. The wicked niceties of these men like a tourniquet around my neck, my father's age and German, every one of them.

And I am surrounded.

I know some hid Jews, falsified documents, killed one so hundreds could go free, unlikely but perhaps one of these men was righteous.

I sat in 1977 safety, caught in the possibility that perhaps suddenly I might find myself in 1942 surrounded. My Polish skin not sufficiently hiding my history. My foreign features betraying my identity, ancestry, different.

Very different from a Hollywood movie where Jane Fonda plays Lillian Hellman. A bad casting call in a Hollywood world where a Jew can look like Jane Fonda. Jane Fonda, running through Nazi Germany like a nervous WASP, with narrow hips and cute little nose, small nervous gestures. If we looked like that perhaps we wouldn't have been cooked to death, found our skins stretched into lampshades, our hair woven into rugs, our ashes into the soap the good Germans bathed in to wash away the stench, the ashes that coated their hair, their skin, their cities, as they breathed in the dead cells of Jews they didn't know. The Jewish girls, singing between the camps and the factory just relieved to be outside for the day.

See, they are happy.

III: 2002

Intifada
Uprising
Intifada
Uprising
We look through a mirror or are we the reflection? Guns poised shooting the image or are we the image shooting the subject of the reflection? A strange apartheid, who are the good Germans now?

Israeli generals admit to studying Nazi strategy against the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, the strategies in bring down the ghetto of Jewish insurrectionists fighting to the death, a suicide mission, the desperation of those who have nothing left to lose holding back the Nazi's longer than all of Poland. There are no Jews in Poland now and they still hate us

There are Jews in Palestine, studying the German strategy, shooting their own image, a strange apartheid, separation of kinship, the children of Abraham with Europe as father reigning down terror pitting skin against skin. And the silence, the complicity.

I hear of Israeli soldiers marking numbers on the arms of Palestinian prisoners
(the camps)
rounding up all the men
(the ghettos)
torture
(the camps)
targeting children
(the ghettos -the camps)
house arrest
(the ghettos)
refugee camps
(the ghettos)
high officials calling the people vermin
a cancer
not enough chemotherapy
transfer
(the final solution).

I have met these people, all of them; the good Germans; the generals, the soldiers who just want to get through the tour alive so they can get a job when they get out; the Palestinian families who want to send the children off to school, pick the olives, turn the key in the door to the house that no longer stands in the village that no longer exists beyond the rubble covered in the trees planted by collections take in American synagogues the forestation of the desert, the hope of Europe's refugees, the invisible destruction of a homeland.

Oppressed turned oppressor, blinded by this twist of history, this betrayal of history, this strange apartheid, with special roads, and roadblocks, and false distinctions. We think we are different. we look in the mirror, the distorted reflection from the years on Europe's soil.

I think of Abraham, the patriarch, this strange apartheid the two sons, separated by the bitterness of the desert, reunited at the death of the father.

But three times he sacrificed us both:

The circumcision; the blood that must be shed for boys to become men.

The casting out of Hagar and Ishmael: with merely a loaf of bread and a skin of wine providing nothing beyond the first night in the dessert, while hoarding goats and water.

And the knife at Isaac's throat on the mountaintop: as if even lambs were meant for sacrifice.

I breathe easier that they survived. Ishmael's children are my cousins. We think we are different. We have been stained from years on Europe's soil. To have survived centuries of Europe's plunder to come home to this?

So it is not my home

and

it is not my war

and

if it were my war

I could not fight!

The land is not for sale or plunder. Nothing can be gained from hegemony. In this betrayal of our history, killing them is killing me. We have broken the mirror of our own souls and we have broken it upon their backs.

©2004 Emma Rosenthal All Rights Reserved

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