SIMCHAT TORAH WAR

by Elya Braden

“Bereshit” print from Nireh Or

The beginning is the promise of the end.

—Henry Ward Beecher

 

Every Fall we rock the house,

dance & sing & lift the scroll.

Roll back to B’reishit. In the beginning—

chaos cleaved into light & dark

a man a woman a garden a fall.

 

Roll back l’dor v’dor—generation

to generation. 

Roll back Deuteronomy’s gifts—

Ten Commandments, Moses peering

into the Promised Land.

Roll back Numbers’ sufferings—

rod, stone, bland manna,

a wilderness of complaint. 

Roll back Leviticus’ hundreds of tiny edicts

the cost of forgiveness—

denial & purification.

Roll back Exodus’ hungry waters,

locusts, frogs, endless night,

          lambs’ blood to guardian our sons.

Roll back to Genesis—father/mother/handmaid,

multiply two sons & divide 

by one patch of desert.

 

So, who’s to blame for blood feud? 

Isaac & Ishmael? Or their mothers—

Sarah & Hagar? Sarah’s laughter 

withering on her lips as her handmaid 

suckles Abraham’s eldest— 

a legacy of lack & opportunity.

Or blame God—God’s two-faced 

promise: I will make of your son 

a great nation. 

 

Well, one thing we know about land 

is God ain’t making any more.

Yet we multiply like frogs, spill

from lakes & puddles & faucets & mouths, 

our hunger rises like the papery wings 

of a thousand moths splitting their cocoons, 

stripping the trees of green.

 

So why not drone a war on this day 

we dance & sing, raise Torah scrolls 

above our heads to celebrate return? 

B’reishit bara Elohim,

“In the beginning, God created…”

 

Air raid sirens the only psalms now sung 

in this land of too many Gods.

Editor’s Note: Simchat Torah, a Jewish holiday that celebrates and marks the conclusion of the annual cycle of public Torah readings, began for Hebrew Year 5784 on Saturday, 7 October 2023 and ended on Sunday, 8 October 2023.

Elya Braden is a writer and mixed-media artist living in Ventura County, CA, and is an editor for Gyroscope Review. She is the author of the chapbooks, Open The Fist (2020) and The Sight of Invisible Longing (2023). Her work has been published in Anti-Heroin Chic, Prometheus Dreaming, Rattle Poets Respond, Sequestrum, Sheila-Na-Gig Online, The Louisville Review, and elsewhere. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets.

IN PARADISE

by Elya Braden

Above the meadow
a sky so blank you could scrawl
the story of your heart
a wordless prayer
but where is God now
in a field bloody with poppies?
Their orange-red heads bob contentment
in the timid breeze
like the limpid heads of those addicts
slack-jawed in lawn chairs
perched on the corner
of oblivion and never.
Those orange-red poppies
so innocent
of the conflagration they’ve matched
to the multitudes of walking
wounded, mute-mouthed
limping, scrambling
at the empty rattle of one
last Vicodin in the bottle
the Doctor’s No
the friend who has a friend who has
a needle. Is God there—
that slant shadow passing
between the poppies
sunning themselves in paradise
their orange-red heads
nodding: Here is a door,
your way out.

Elya Braden took a long detour from her creative endeavors to pursue an eighteen-year career as a corporate lawyer and entrepreneur. She is now a writer and mixed-media artist living in Los Angeles. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Algebra of Owls, Calyx, Gyroscope, The Main Street Rag, Rattle, Willow Review and elsewhere.