Judith Offer
(USA)
THE GRAND LAKE THEATRE MARQUEE
To Alan Michaan
Not flashing lanterns in Old North steeple,
One stealthy, terrifying night,
The British are coming, one if by land,
But red plastic letters in broad daylight,
In full view of 580, God, and Republicans:
OHIO VOTING MACHINES FIXED.
SAVE DEMOCRACY FOR OUR CHILDREN.
Not an historic district, cobbled streets,
But next to greasy KFC, how prosaic,
Across from the Saturday Farmer’s Market,
Organic cucumbers, eight-seed bread
Six kinds of chutney, homemade:
BUSH LIED ABOUT WMD.
STOP THIS IMMORAL WAR.
Republicans send Letters to the Editor:
I’ll never spend another dime in his theatre!
On the front page of the same paper,
Iraq veterans come back without brains,
Cutbacks are made in their benefits.
US CEOs MAKE 100 TIMES WORKERS.
CONGRESS VOTES MORE BILLIONS FOR WAR.
Not a sweating, galloping stallion,
Miles on miles through moonlight.
But red plastic letters on a white marquee,
One-by-one, at the top of a creaky ladder,
Day after week after month.
AFGANISTAN, IRAQ, AND NOW IRAN?
IMPEACH BUSH AND CHENEY.
Ride, Alan, ride!
AT THE FOOT OF MOUNT SINAI
Not temple; not church; not mosque
but wall.
Not roof
but sky
sun stars moons clouds rain.
Not atrium; inner sanctum; altar; aisle
but walled circle
all sides equal
all beginnings endings
all welcome.
Not doors; gates; windows
but spaces left to enter
one north one east one west one south.
Not cedar; sandstone; marble; stressed concrete
but adobe alone and no higher.
Not designed chosen won architected paid approved
but put
one each brick from every earth
by sweat consecrated
by one sun stroked.
Not statues symbols carvings etchings mosaics
but earth by Who-Gives-Earth
bricks by even-who-has-nothing-other-to-give.
Not services sacrifices rituals rites
but prayers by woman and man
kneeling standing lying sitting
whispering singing chanting shouting:
Not raids bombings hostages heroes territories victories
but peace.
BOUNDARIES
If you step across this line I’ll
Piss on your grass ground grandmother.
This is my yard farm country
I inherited it from
God and everybody;
It says so here in my
Paper will Book
And my face manhood reputation depends upon
This wind-blown border
In the hills between the mountains
Under ocean sand where the line moves
Grows follows the river’s edge
Clearly along the map.
Anybody can see
It’s mine ours;
We’ll do anything if you touch it;
We’ll fight to the last rotting
Child to the last dotted line,
Across the plain desert field territory
Which we obviously deserve
Because we’re stronger smarter chosen
And besides
I paid a lot of money
To be buried with my grandfathers.
TUNNELING AND UNTUNNELING
My car moves smoothly toward the tunnel,
Through hills and unhills. Pastel houses,
Like so many Easter eggs, hide and unhide
In the rising green. My neck
Kvetches. I stretch, shift,
Flip the switch on the radio,
Moving the selector from noise to news.
Caught in mid-sentence, the deft reporter
Snatches me up, drops me inside the Holocaust
Museum, across the country, along the Mall.
Amid piles of purified Jewish shoes,
Lists of the long-ago unwanted wanted,
And photos of babies cleansed and uncleansed,
A speaker says, How could we let this happen?
My car plunges willingly into the tunnel,
And the Holocaust mumbles and fades. In the
Rumbling half-light, my daughter appears,
Unpacking and packing her backpack,
Grumbling at a blackening banana smearing
The back of her math book. No bombs fall
As she grabs her jacket and fades.
Out of the tunnel, into the bright light
Of a schoolyard in Bosnia, the radio
Is counting the ethnically bombed and unbombed.
One boy, blood running inside and outside
His cheeks, begs against the darkness,
Don’t cry, Mama. Please don’t cry. An announcer
Says I helped make his program possible.
I punch his button as the tunnel disappears
In a curve of highway in my rearview mirror.
A flute slides out of the left speaker
And the San Francisco Bay fills
The windshield like a scene on a screen.
Above, cumulus accumulate in stories of stories,
Plots wound and unwound in breezy gestures.
My car turns and unturns the city streets,
Pulls up to a curb. Children gaggle and ungaggle
At the schoolgate, waiting to be wanted.
My Kate yanks the hefty car door,
Heaves herself and her load inside,
Announces, banana got all over
My backpack, and turns the radio off.
FOUND IN THE SUNDAY PAPER
March 9, 2003
Bush Girds for War in Solitude, But Not in Doubt
Revolution in Warfare:
It’s All in the Network
Mothers Wait, Aching
For Word From Sons
A Biblical struggle of Good versus Evil
The fog of war can be dispelled
by enough sensors, networks, and smart weapons
It takes 14 to 17 days
for a letter to come from Kuwait.
The first thing he reads every day is the threat assessment.
Our military budget is almost equal
to that of the rest of the world combined.
the damage war does
to mothers’ souls
presenting himself in an hour-long news conference…impervious to doubt
using behavior-modifying drugs
to create Terminator-like soldiers.
He’s very loving.
He’s everything he could be.
It is humbling to realize there are thousands of people praying for me.
the Pentagon Office
of Force Transformation
I’ve worn out my floors
praying.
Upstairs the first lady was entertaining friends.
the frustrated battlefield CEO
threw stupefying tantrums.
There are times I feel
I can’t breathe.
I put my hand on the Bible and I swore to protect America.
thermabaric bombs, microwave weapons,
unmanned aerial vehicles, Pack Boy robots
her baby boy in Kuwait
with a gun in his hands
For the next ten minutes, the president…sat in solitude, undisturbed.
by perfecting precision weapons,
forcing our enemies to rely on terrorism.
There is no way
for me to help him.
Amazingly calm.
a kind of War-Mart
You have to let them go.
____________________________________________
Judith Offer has had two daughters, five books of poetry and dozens of plays. (Eighteen of the latter, including six musicals, have been produced.) She has read her poetry at scores of poetry venues, but is particularly delighted to have been included in the Library of Congress series and on “All Things Considered”, on NPR. Her writing reflects her childhood in a large Catholic family—with some Jewish roots—her experience as teacher, community organizer, musician, historian, gardener, and all-purpose volunteer, and her special fascination with her roles of wife and mother. Her most recent book of poetry, called DOUBLE CROSSING, is poems about Oakland, California, where she lives with her husband, Stuart.
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