Vox Populi
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Jena Schwartz: Preparing for Sabbath
My name is caught in my throat. I reach in and tug, lightly at first and then with more force, until it ribbons out from my mouth. With this cloth, I'll cool your brow when the heat is too much, I will wave it in the air like a flag signaling no surrender ever, I will hang it on my door so that you know this house will welcome you. I will send it out into the desert where it will find Jacob and Sarah and the traveling temple that has been dismantled and reassembled more times than there are stars. This voice of mine is stuck tonight, words falling everywhere as I prepare for the Sabbath, sweeping piles of debris from the ground, reaching into my own throat to make a clearing, and the sound that comes is anguish, is grief, is looking at the crevices I've neglected, of burying my face in the flowers after rain and calling it prayer.
Copyright 2020 Jena Schwartz.
Jena Schwartz is a poet, writer and writing coach who lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.
Vox Populi 
Just lived in it while it lasted. Gorgeous. Satisfying.
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Sometimes a poem pauses me in my busyness. This one did. Thank you.
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Lovely, evocative, almost (but not quite) desolate. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, holiness and healing are elusive here, obstructed by the experience of pain and repeated dislocation, but still potentially present, within reach.
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Lovely response. Thanks, Dan!
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Nice flow. Like sad water in a depressed river. But hope floats in each sentence.
I am in the middle of sun blast amid vast areas of sand. I feel this song.
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