The canyons were burned
too long ago for color
to hold. Which lines
did we force and which were given?
I belong to you
still too long. From high up it is clear
some towns have no desire
to touch. I guard my belly,
hands break in. The borders scream
in no such silence. Shadow
and sun turn our bodies
as days pass, we look
yet all but we change.
How does the desert
know what it takes in
when it is forced
to take us in?
Witchcraft
It is better to go to a house of mourning than to a house of feasting, since that is the end of all [wo]men, and
the living will take it to heart. (Ecclesiastes 7:2, Ketubot 72a)
Was it a house of feast or a house of mourning?
The women keep baby clothes in the dressers,
in the refrigerator, in the garden. They know
the language of birds.
The women stir the pot with witchcraft
and share all secret matters in the bathroom.
Did the rabbis think they could unspool us
without listening? Our ears pressed to each other
and still we do not hear. The raven is deemed
untrustworthy, but the dove is a symbol
and thus honest. The women touched
the boiling pot with bare hands
and thus were righteous. The women touched
each other with bare hands and thus
were righteous. I rewrite beginnings
but keep their ends. The women bend
their backs towards river, a river
appears, a ferry to cross.
Wash out the blood from your sheets
in their sounds. The women
wore blue and yellow flowers but
[don’t worry] did no magic. The midwives
tied their hands behind their backs.
The women leave traces of ink in the river
for me to touch. I gesture them
with my eyes closed—magic,
no magic, my hand over my hand,
they touch me with my eyes closed.
Rachel Kaufman is a poet, teacher, and PhD candidate in Latin American and Jewish History at UCLA. Her work explores diasporic memory and argues for the power of poetry as historical method. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming on poets.org and in AGNI, The Georgia Review, Harvard Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Jabberwock Review, Rethinking History, The Yale Historical Review, Diagram, Comedia Performance, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, and Colonial Latin American Review. The author of poetry collection, Many to Remember (2021), she was a 2023 Helene Wurlitzer poet-in-residence, a 2025 Willapa Bay AiR poet-in-residence, and a Fulbright-Hays Scholar. These poems come from a new manuscript of Talmudic poetry.