Ruth \’rüth\(n.)
BY AVIA TADMOR
Finalist for the 2019 Gregory Djanikian Scholars Program
Meaning friendship. Meaning flight
of rare birds. Meaning a woman
who doesn’t belong here. Meaning I wanted
to know, when Naomi, meaning my mother
and friend said, go to the threshing floor.
When he sleeps, uncover a place at his feet
and lay there, make yourself known
meaning, attempt at seduction
what else do you have, did she mean
to define or defend me?
Ruth Remembers Imagining the Field Before Leaving Moab
BY AVIA TADMOR
Finalist for the 2019 Gregory Djanikian Scholars Program
after Traci Brimhall
I listened. I listened and hated the thought of the women who left before me, their dark bodies advancing through you like shadows, their voices thin summer rain. All I’d known was my body had always wanted another but I dreamed of them lain alone in the clearing belonging to no one. I dreamed of them closing their eyes, of how they’d stir strange heat on the ground not to remember the place they’d come from as much as to write new desire in dirt. I wanted to know what they named the season for being nameless. I imagined their soles growing thick until splitting open, green insects laying amethyst eggs in the sores. I imagined not knowing what winged thing breeds in the flesh or how by the end of the season, something turns into sawfly or moth. It was spring and I washed alone. Watched cane toads at night eat their own so by summer I’d wake up forgetting the songs of the tribe, the stakes that hold up the temple. I wanted to be free of the seasons, of living thankful, a freedom even from God. I want to trust the old world will reassemble without me. To trust myself to return as I’d come here: unbridled and still good.