`
Poet Wrestling with BloodFell
Not every conversation is worth having.
The heart makes us a regressive species.
Intelligence isn’t as easy as learning
things. Thing is often the most accurate
word in my vocabulary. Accuracy is not
the same as being exact, nor is it precise
in judgement. I flirt quite carelessly
with meaning. When I read Hebrew,
I feel trapped by God. God & I are horse
& walks beside her. God & I talk to ourselves
in each other. When I was not old enough
to ask questions I learned
Hebrew words are boys & girls—
shalom, the brotherly
guardian of the fields while milchama, all the beasts
& broken seals. Now I believe
bitter herbs are best eaten
by the spoonful.
Language like God is a solitary pursuit
when you’re trying
truth
only. Dirt before the egg & the chicken while elegies
must’ve come before odes,
though both reveal the teeth & bones
of what made a thing a thing.
Flossing regularly
feels as lavish
as sowing early fields
& getting to the bottom
of things never gets to what’s really
eating you. Eggs won’t ever expire
if you boil them long enough. That kind of time
tires me. Truth tires out the best of us,
like waiting longer for the sun to go down
on a summer Sabbath. Not every
conversion will turn wild
horses toward
God. I don’t mind if I never leave
this galaxy, given the rate
space is expanding.
Head-banging is the best way to kill a headache.
Hair metal over folk ballads since you’ll die
in my arms tonight & won’t stop believing
that nothing’s gonna stop me now.
But I’ll keep Annabel Lee.
It’s the best worst ballad about she.
I don’t covet male pronouns. I know who I am
exactly. Won’t say
where I’m going. Hi. When I say shalom,
I don’t mean peace. Even if I don’t know you,
I’ll share my food
because I get full quickly.
It’s still a sort of giving.
A spoonful is not as good as peeling
skin & getting in there
savage & messy
with my hands. In public. On public transit.
I save the pits & plant them. It’s still a sort of
grieving. Because dirt before the chicken & eggs
eventually dry
up & that’s why time
is always trying me. Misogyny is not
a misunderstanding
of culture. There is awareness.
Of which I am
suspicious
of the men
who unpieced
& thinged
my equus
into elegy.
I had to fight them off
alone & could not
& it was not a matter
of accuracy.
There was light, there was dirt, there was gaving.
I’m suspicious of the giving it takes
to grieve. I’d like to bury them
in all the things they took
from me. Watch them blight
& go to seed. Let them heal
by becoming
nothing. Repeat.
Repeat.
You said the Hebrew word for war is female.
I say bitter horses are best eaten for eternity.
I like the turn that they have taken.
Not everything is a conversation.
Born to a Mexican mother and Jewish father, Rosebud Ben-Oni is the winner of 2019 Alice James Award for If This Is the Age We End Discovery, forthcoming in 2021, and the author of turn around, BRXGHT XYXS (Get Fresh Books, 2019). Her chapbook 20 Atomic Sonnets, which appears in Black Warrior Review (2020), is part of a larger future project called The Atomic Sonnets, which she began in 2019, in honor of the Periodic Table’s 150th Birthday. She is a recipient of the 2014 NYFA Fellowship in Poetry and a 2013 CantoMundo Fellow. Her work appears in POETRY, The American Poetry Review, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, Poetry Society of America (PSA), The Poetry Review (UK), Tin House, Guernica, Black Warrior Review, TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, Electric Literature, Hayden’s Ferry Review,, among others. In 2017, her poem “Poet Wrestling with Angels in the Dark” was commissioned by the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in NYC and published by The Kenyon Review Online. Recently, her poem “Dancing with Kiko on the Moon” was featured in Tracy K. Smith’s The Slowdown.She writes weekly for The Kenyon Review blog.