RITUAL HAND-WASHING

by William Nelson

But why, why? So strange
—an anonymous oversight
or burnt to ashes in our Holocaust,
or a tractate slipped behind a shelf
in our vast library of right and wrong—that

neither did Rabbi Yohannan ben Zakkai expound,
nor brilliant Maimonides explicate,
nor any sage Talmid Chakam, ancient or modern, tell

why the Talmud,

which so sternly, so minutely, so expansively
demands we cleanse our hands of their impurity
with water poured from a particular cup

before eating bread,
after eating bread,
before worship,
after sleeping,
after touching a corpse,
after defecation,
before reciting a prayer,
after touching hidden parts of our body
or a menstruating woman,
after leaving a cemetery,
and so forth, and so on, so strange

that our Talmud

omits to command us
to wash our opened hands
up to the wrist
with water poured from a particular cup

after strangling a people to death.

William Nelson is a retired lawyer living in Vermont. He won poetry prizes in college and in law school, and he has published a book of poetry Implementing Standards of Good Behavior (L'Epervier Press, 1972) and poems in various magazines (though not lately). Nelson returned to poetry after a career as a public defender. He has posted some of his poems on a Substack site.

CORONA

by Dale Wisely

Daffodil corona by Nick Harris

                           1

Crown of stars

Corona

The rarefied gaseous envelope
          of stars, our sun

Unfathomable halo,
           obscured by the relentless
           blaze of plasma, hydrogen, and helium

Only a perfect eclipse—
          miracle of astronomic alignment—
          permits us a glimpse
          of the pearly glow
          flaring out from the black disk
          of the superimposed moon

                          2

Crown of thorns

We take care not to confuse
          illness with death,
          or melancholy with mourning

Now our sickness and our death
          seem inseparable and
          we are blind to the distinction

And in these days
          depression and grief
          run along parallel lines
          and converge on the horizon

          under a crown of flames
          under a crown of glory


                   3

Crown of flowers

Corona

Shaped like a cup or a trumpet,
     the flared center of the common daffodil

amaryllis     paperwhite    triandrus      narcissus  

a perennial: it flowers, dies—

but the gardener does not say it dies,
          she says it “dies back”

It is time to sort our sickness from our death

Die back and grow again another year

Author’s Note: Some of the language in part 1 is from the Google dictionary entry for “corona.” Howie Good contributed the “crown of …” phrases.

Dale Wisely runs Ambidextrous Bloodhound which publishes four journals: Right Hand Pointing, One Sentence Poems, Unbroken, and Unlost.  His chapbook Seven Stars is out in April 2020.

HOLDING A CUP

by Tricia Knoll

I never had to hold up a cup
to get what leaks my way.

My mother’s French porcelain
remaining tea cup, the delicate handle?

That pewter beer mug
I got at a white elephant party?

Yes, I’m strong enough
to keep my arm up for a time

that old, teacher, call on me,
I have something to say,

while darkening winter
waters soak my toes

to numb. The arms
of an old woman

who only knows
that trickle down

means something cold,
frozen. Like needled icicles.

Tricia Knoll is an Oregon poet who usually itemizes her tax returns. She has lived long enough to read the debunking on trickle down theories of tax cuts. Her next book How I Learned to Be White comes out from Antrim House is early 2018.