Lately it’s all Egypt, and leaving Egypt,
for me. It combines the three great plots:
I go on a journey. A stranger comes to town.
We leave the narrow land: they’re pressing us down.
The stranger is the traveling magician,
the golden calf in an amulet around his neck,
a holy name three times on golden ring.
He shines at me across the sand.
Women smoke cigarettes outside his tent –
each tent window looks onto another.
The calf carries a globe between his horns.
A snake rears its head on center temple.
The people are horny, and lonely, and our leader not gentle.
I’m a serious person with a commitment,
but I’m burning up. An electricity buzzes under my skin.
Like a string I wore for two years around my ankle
that someone gave me. It heated from within.
Things open up in the desert heat –
the little calf that came with us bleats out of the fire
on spindly legs. Warm gold cells will spark the stream.
We shall drink him tenderly. We meant to be better.
It’s all Egypt and leaving Egypt for me, whatever I do.
Ma tovu.
Sarah Heller’s poems have been published in the “Pine Hill Review”, “RealPoetik”, “Painted Bride Quarterly”, “Pembroke Magazine”, “The Temple/El Templo”, “Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet”, “Hayloft” and others. She teaches Advanced Creative Writing at Rutgers University, and lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two daughters.
