Ori Fienberg | Rattle: Poetry

Ori Fienberg

CRUSHES

Most have heard stories of the lead-covered

Bibles soldiers of the great wars carried into

battle, whose words protected their hearts.

But when bibles ran out they used other books;

pocket dictionaries, conversational French or

a pamphlet of poetry, moved from gunnysacks,

making more room for words, to be passed back

home. And after the bullets enter the prayer for

peace of their choosing, they become heirloom

seeds of lead planted in letters, which change to

mulch in drawers, attics, and unsealed, lightless

cedar chests, which also store their hearts: love

letters and Reichsmarks with watermarks, or

rain marks, or tear marks, obscuring history. But

children who find these obscured pages are well

versed in erasure, for though the school library

shut long ago due to lack of funds, they’ve always

known the wars continue and each has been given

a bullet-proof backpack, calculator, lunch bag, or

one slim textbook, for a class they all fear they may

need to take, though they don’t know the location,

it’s not on the schedule, and there’s no way to study,

so they pass folded notes in study hall to friends, to

crushes asking what matters most: do you like me?

Would you take me out after school? Would you take

a bullet for me? Would you pin it to your jacket above

your heart? Would you hold it in your arms at the last

dance so everyone knows this bold brass boy is yours?

—from Poets Respond
November 17, 2019

__________

Ori Fienberg: “There are no reasonable words to describe a school shooting, or the stress that students of all ages must bear every day in knowing that weapons of war, or any weapon, may be used against them while they learn.” (web)

Ori Fienberg

CERTAIN ISLANDS

I’ve only seen a wild fire once, and it was probably too small

to count, just a spontaneous outburst in a grove of gnarled

white spruce on a powder keg of brittle needles, raising a gray

flag high. But who knows? Maybe it was careless campers (to

err is only presidential) or perhaps it was intentional. Certainly

there was a thrill in watching it burn, from a canoe, gliding across

a broad lake, while a few drops of water sprayed on each stroke.

It’s easy to hold a peninsula on fire in view, but harder to see the

forest for the trees, to imagine the fire everywhere, the exhaust

rushing unavoidably into the lungs of the earth. At the same time

all the men I knew growing up were islands of sorts, unclaimed or,

not for sale, far too vast to put a price tag on certain principles;

now I fear some men are islands who could burst into flames at any

moment, not like lava from a volcano thought dormant, but the sort

we’re building every day from the tinder we share with each other:

papery birch barked opinions, crisp conspiracies of undergrowth

where a spark can start a blaze so fast that smoke is only released

later, like thunder from a far-off lightning strike. I wish we knew now,

what we know now; I wish a satellite shot of a carbon cloud could

cause as much fear as the rotting body of a moose in a place that

will never burn. A political candidate must shake hands with every

person in NH to get their vote: it’s so hard to trust or believe what

everyone tells you, till you row the length of Lake Winnipesaukee

and lose the sun in pink water, till you can feel it in your own lungs.

—from Poets Respond
August 25, 2019

__________

Ori Fienberg: “There are so many small men and small conflagrations right in front of us, that absurd speculation around the sale of an enormous island territory can monopolize our attention for days. Meanwhile, the Amazon rainforest is burning at a record rate.” (web)