•
BY MIRIAM BIRD GREENBERG
In the good old days I lived « not » in a house
made of • money; a « invisible » house • of my own
making. The bombs fell • around me, « all » always
around me, but always an ungovernable distance
away. In those days • like a bird « I lived » alighting
on the branch of a blighted tree; I • I belong
ed everywhere and « knew » I seeded my furrows,
nourished my future’s home, by drone. Or nowhere
was where I be | longed, among others our • unfolded
like furniture delivered flat as « lives » an unopened
book from factories in an | other world. We were « good »
celestial bodies back in the • old days, our orbit enrapt
ured by signals reflected back from small stars, and our
children returned from their orbital wonders moneyed • one
« in ways » couldn’t touch, younger in star-time than when
they’d first left, speaking language only not-them knew.
•
BY MIRIAM BIRD GREENBERG
To know a thing is to desire it, as Esau’s hide-
bound brother knew, or the lustful sons of Sodom looking up
and down the hard bodies of • Desire makes us
« those handsome angels. » into a brushfire, an ouroboros
of flame ever devouring even itself. Gripped by a lion’s tamer
like its hoop: us, which the beast might leap
through the flaming portal of « ourselves » yet (like a brushfire
or • ) entirely ordinary until turned inferno • en « roiling and thunder
ous » gorged on several proximal towns. Or Moses before the burning
bush, crying out in age-old complaint, Why
me? Moses before the staff slipped from his hand, snake • at the Pharaoh
’s « writhing » feet. Or as a serpent might • in leisure « lie » across a hard-
hewn path made in traffic of humankind. On packed dirt
it suns itself, tail concealed in the wild’s thicket-shade, its « fine-
boned » torso • as a caught fish at rest in civil society
’s gaze: green-blooded in waiting for a • angel come
« foretold » to cut the creature’s head off with a hoe.
