If Jerusalem Were Fresh Bread
by Julia Vinograd
They knead her with their fists like dough,armies, kitchens.
They bake her in the oven of their hatred,
in the oven of their love
and cannot tell the difference.
They take her out and into their arms,
there's no smell like fresh bread
and fill their mouths with her stones
and live forever and die forever
and cannot tell the difference.
There are ovens in her memory
but not for bread.
If Jerusalem were fresh bread
for every little family, for weddings,
for festivals,
the first thing they do
still wearing their aprons
with dinner places set
and slim candles lit
is reach for a big knife
to slice her in pieces
and then each other,
and cannot tell the difference.
Winter Questions
by Julia Vinograd
The call of the wildis always collect.
Will you accept the charges?
Are you from the wrong side
of the tracks on your arm?
How long ago
did you bury your shadow?
Where you broke it
does the mirror still bleed?
Does each raindrop
have your name carved on it
like bullets from an old western?
Can you give a new set of batteries
to the cold wind?
Don't answer.
The street
has been temporarily disconnected
and there's nobody here
but us chickens
doublecrossing the road.
Dream
by Julia Vinograd
I dreamed of a department store selling wounds,some raised up by fluttering wings,
some edged with delicate lace,
some under spotlights backed by mirrors.
It was an expensive store. Each wound came with a story.
Immaculate shopmen carried rolled scrolls on silver platters
to read the history of wounds in low precise voices.
The shoppers paused and asked their friends’ advice
as if they were choosing diamond necklaces or ballgowns.
Some of the wounds still bled, some had healed scars
that ached in winter. Veterans also shopped there,
feeling their own wounds were out of fashion
and wanting something better.
Drinking fountains ran with bright red blood.
Broken hearts dangled from chandeliers,
who'll take you seriously at a party without a broken heart?
A large silver-green abalone shell full of glass eyes,
run them thru your fingers, what do you see?
There were no price tags. Each wound came at its own cost.
You went on paying and paying.
The store of wounds was always full.
I dreamed nobody could live without one.
For the Young Men Who Died of AIDS
by Julia Vinograd
The dead lovers are almost as beautifulas razor-edged spaces in the air where they used to walk.
Do you remember his hand lazily playing
with the rim of a glass, making the ghost of a bell sound
for his own ghost, and the talk didn’t even pause?
The glass is whole. Break it; break it now.
Break everything.
How can people go on buying toothpaste
and planning their summer vacations?
Vegetables would care more.
The potato has a thousand eyes all mourning for the lovers
who lived in their deaths like a country
foreign to everywhere for a long time before dying.
A long time watching people look away.
The potato only met them under the earth
after their deaths and it still wept. And we do not.
The ghost bell makes barely a sound forever.
The dead lovers are still in love, but no one else is.
He took his hand with him, a grave is as good
as a briefcase to keep the essentials in:
a smile, bones, a way of biting his lip
just before looking into your eyes.
Shoulder blades cutting into summer like butter.
All the commuters in a rush hour traffic jam
are cursing because the lovers are dying
faster than their cars.
The child sent to bed without dinner cries
for the lovers, also sent to bed early and without.
Unfair. Throw the dishes against the wall. Break them.
The dead lovers are almost as beautiful
as when they were alive.
You can hear the rim of a glass
tolling for the ghosts to come home.
Break the glass, break the ghosts. Pull down the sky.
Break everything.
Dance on the fragments. Scream their names.
Get splinters of ghosts under your skin
torn and bleeding because it hurts,
because it hurts so bad.
People's Park, 1991
by Julia Vinograd
The university just built a volleyball courton my youth. I watched.
The net was woven of my hair
when my hair was long enough to sit on.
The ball was my head
when my head bounced everywhere
and was never on my shoulders very long.
I know this happens to everyone.
Sometimes it’s a department store
on top of a table where a candlelight dinner
is still going on.
Or a parking garage with a ghost tree
growing thru it
and someone waiting beside the tree,
still breathing hard because he ran all the way
and just got there
as Toyotas drive thru his side
and leave no wound.
Why should my youth be different than any other,
just because it’s mine?
I can feel the slaps on my young face
when the volleyball players hit their ball,
she isn’t used to it.
Why are strangers beating on her?
She doesn’t have any money.
The police shot at her, but that’s different.
And then there’s a crowd
and the police are shooting at us
and the bullets didn’t get older.
James Rector is the same age
as when they killed him 20 years ago.
Broken window. Screams.
She can’t believe this is happening.
I’m ashamed that I can.
I can’t find anything to say to her,
not a single word.
This time there is no tear gas
to excuse my tears.
Personal Poem
by Julia Vinograd
People want me to write personal poetry about who I am.
Well, who are you?
Do you wash underwear, do you sign petitions, do you litter, do you love?
What are your hands for?
Do you feel cheated at unexpected moments
as if you were stuck with the wrong life, maybe mine?
What does your face look like reading these words
or when you’re asleep or dying or trying to decide what do order in a restaurant?
Do you want to be phony when you grow up?
Do you cross at the crosswalk?
Do you hang on the cross?
Do you floss your teeth?
Do you love?
Do you hate your work?
Does your wallpaper sneer at you?
Did you lose the blue and white marble with the crack inside
when you were seven?
I found it by the drainpipe but I don’t have it anymore.
What is it you can’t make un-happen
hurting inside you like cancer of the memory?
What is it you want to keep as shining as it was
when you couldn’t believe it was happening?
If you show me yours, I’ll show you mine?
How much time do you spend doing compulsive and complicated arithmetic
with imaginary money?
Are you on good terms with your scars?
Do you remember the sound of a floorboard under your bare feet
when you weren’t supposed to be listening?
Are you listening?
How do you convince the air to let you through?
Do you want to suffer nobly as a bad film and never wait in line?
Can you give me a light?
I don’t want a cigarette, it’s just getting dark.
I stare out my window and don’t see you.
You stare out your window and don’t see me.
We’re going to die some day.
Who are you?
World Dance
by Julia Vinograd
It’s not the wars or gangs or even families fighting
after hard work, and the food always tastes the same
while outside the summer window butterflies dance.
Everything dies, sooner or later.
Winning or losing, everything dies.
Birds splatter the heads of statues
and fly away. Children play hide and seek with the wind,
the wind always wins. Horizons swing like unfurling wings
somersaulting upwards.
Lie on your back on a weed-wild hill
and stare up looking for the sky pulsing behind the sky.
The game of pain plays and stays and repeats
that everything dies sooner or later.
But the sky behind the sky tells you its secret
close in your ear and warm against your lips:
everything lives.
Reach out and touch, bend and believe.
Everything lives, leaf, bird, blackberry.
The world is too big to lose.
Why I Write Poetry
by Julia Vinograd
Because I can't trust God
to look after the world and my friends.
Worship sure, wandering forests of legend
braiding flowers from the Tree of Life in my hair
while God's beard storms overhead.
But not trust. People die. Everyone dies.
It may be God's will but it's my won't.
Sea turtles live a thousand years.
My words can't become flesh.
My words can't heal an open wound.
But I am a poet and I know we need more time
to make our own huge splendid mistakes,
mistakes we deserve, not just the small clinical mistakes
built into out bodies.
We could have many-colored rings spinning around our minds
like the rings of Saturn.
We could map constellations around a lover's face
and every child could be the Messiah
because the world always needs saving.
God, it is a very beautiful world,
but no thank you, it is not enough.
No thank you for the sunrise when our eyes go blind.
A blank page is a place to list the creation
we weren't given. A shopping list of eternity
where we're never too sick to swallow fresh blueberries
and where the dance never ends.
A blank page is a paper bird to fold up and fly.
I can't change anything but I am a poet
and if I can't trust God I must speak
for the world and my friends.
Want more. Want so much more.
Test each day and night for ripeness
like a melon at the market.
You're crucified on the hands of a clock,
pull out those nails.
I'm throwing you a rope of words.
Hold on.
Magic
by Julia Vinograd
Once upon a time when we all lived in the forest
musicians came to tall slippery stones twice their height
and sang of emperors who emptied buckets
of opals and amethysts
over cliffs to be eaten by wild beasts.
Once upon a time a broken rib cage
big as a city covered with purple flowers
where languid women feasted on poppies and teased foxcubs,
tickling their bellies.
Once upon a time wolves rode painted ferris wheels
higher than the highest trees and took bites out of the moon.
White blood flowed in rivers where underwater nightclubs
flashed disco balls and salmon ate sequins. Masked dancers
partnered only by their own shadows. Pearl-handled revolvers
grew like toadstools in circles on funeral moss,
thick and squelchy.
The wizard’s hut moved around, a road of shiny pebbles
and a low thatched roof,
spellbooks made of stinging blue flowering nettles.
Don’t touch. A tiger that leapt out of the noonday sun.
Once upon a time when church bells rang in tall dark pines
and toy cars croaked on lilypads like frogs.
Once upon a time there was no time,
Death and Love slept in each other’s arms.
Mountains On The Inside
by Julia Vinograd
The mountains that must be climbedare the mountains inside you.
Higher than Everest and more dangerous than volcanoes
that shoot fire in the air between your fingers
to scorch fluffy clouds like cooking sheep.
That's your fire and it comes from inside you
hotter than hell and brighter than heaven
and it goes where you send it, it can't wait any longer.
There's a crowd of people inside you trying to clamber out
as if you were a subway train,
they're all packed close together
their names are on their tickets and they don't know
where they're going, it's up to you.
Open your mouth the way the volcano opens its mouth.
There's an ocean inside you,
the ocean that covered the earth once.
Call out the mountains inside you
and let everything begin.
Homeless Is The Wrong Word
by Julia Vinograd
Don't define people
by what they don't have
as if the home that isn't there
was realer than the person
who isn't in it.
There's more to anyone
than an exploding bouquet
of negatives.
What is it you are less
if you're home-more,
'cause everyone's missing something?
And if all you see
is the home they don't have
(the walls they're not behind,
the roof they're not under,
the plumbing that isn't even
there enough to break)
how can you talk to them?
People don't talk to places:
not imaginary places,
not controversial places,
not something-should-be-done places.
People talk to other people
who have mouths
and who can talk
back.
A Poem Is A Street Hustler
by Julia Vinograd
A poem is a street hustler
living on its looks,
smart enough to play dumb
tough enough to look easy
and not hiding its meanings
any more than it has to
to keep from getting busted
for indecent exposure.
Despised and irresistable
in carefully torn jeans
a poem leans against the doorway
not quite looking at you
and saying nothing just yet.
Only the tip of its tongue curls,
as if forgotten in the side of its mouth.
It's young,
it's got a fake I.D.
and it ran away from home
and it doesn't care what happens
as long as everything does.
Culture makes people yawn.
Beauty drives them crazy.
As long as a poem is beautiful
it doesn't need anything else
and knows it.
It laughs dismissingly
at everything that isn't perfect.
It's a little unkind.
Culture comes later when the game gets it
and it needs a pimp and a publisher,
and drugs and distribution
and reassurance and reviews
and it isn't so young any more.
Then the English Teachers get it
and it isn't even a poem any more.
Just homework and a social disease.
A poem is a street hustler
leaning against a doorway
not quite looking at you.
And you can't look away.
All The Night Stars
by Julia Vinograd
Look up at night at all the stars
looking down at you, at the part of you that shines.
There are too many stars for numbers.
The stars shine forever, even when dead.
So do we. Ignore the background noise
of wars and video games and dinosaurs giving speeches.
Fear is a sheer nighty on a skeleton.
Sorrow is wild flowers in a graveyard over our tomorrows.
Look past all that.
Look up at night at all the stars
looking down at you, at the part of you that shines.
Always remember to shine.
The Calling of Jerusalem
by Julia Vinograd
“Jerusalem,” the Lord called softlyand his voice reached all over the world
till drunkards shook their muddled heads
and the smiles of businessmen wavered briefly,
and lovers were suddenly jealous for a moment,
though not of each other.
But there was no answer.
“Jerusalem,” the Lord commanded with all the authority of grief.
“Where are you hiding and why?”
There was no spoken answer
but the air between his hands shrugged of its own accord
and invisible hair, most sacred and desolate, fell against his face.
The Lord carried Jerusalem as a woman carries an unborn child.
“What are you doing here?” he asked her.
“I’m tired,” Jerusalem drowsed,
but forced herself back into words.
“They look, they pray, they dance, they’re exalted,
and then they worry if their parking meters have expired.
I don’t mind the wars, I never did, blood has a beautiful color
and my lips are even more beautiful.
But they fight out of habit now, the way they live,
and it’s all small and unworthy
and most wearisome.
I’m tired of them, they’re not real, they can’t see me
and they make me lonely.
I want to stay with you.”
“No,” said the Lord, “not yet.”
“Soon?” pleaded Jerusalem.
“And you promised you’d never ask that,”
the Lord reminded her gently.
“It hurts,” she answered simply,
“to be always open in a hive of souls
shut in elegant boxes, but firmly shut.
They don’t know how to touch or even how
to want such knowledge.
They don’t want me, only my scalp.
They want to win their arguments
not understand what they’re arguing about,
they couldn’t care less.
What have I to do with them?”
“You are them,” the Lord told her,
“when you were passionate and fickle, so were they.
When you were restless and bitter, so were they.
Now that you want more, they may too.
Go back where you belong
and make their parking meters explode;
you’ve been called a thief many times,
pry open those boxes.
Do you think it will happen of itself?”
Jerusalem cast down her eyes,
shuddered as with cold and nodded,
“But why did you call me then?”
She asked as she reinhabited her stones.
The Lord caressed the air between his hands,
where she had been.
“I was lonely,” the Lord admitted to nobody,
“But it’s over now.”