Take me to the water
not the one surging into infinite
with its missions and imperative
but to the one hushed and brackish
where no one dares to picnic or swim
Take me to the water
there I will smooth away the contortions
dispel the heels clicking down the corridor
contingents from afar insisting on the one true way
perspiration beginning to form
Take me to the water
there I will flee he with the files and folders
accusations so tidy so pointed
names and images on the verge of display
the contents of these many years reduced to a box on the floor
Take me to the water
there I will disrobe in the circle of witness
of those who too used to slink and shiver and now will enfold me
the pine needles will brush my nipples the night sun will not retreat
as the wet darkness rises in greeting
Yermiyahu Ahron Taub is the author of the short story collection, Prodigal Children in the House of G-d (Austin Macauley, 2018), winner of two CIPA EVVY Merit Awards (LGBTQ Fiction and Religious/Spiritual Fiction) and named a finalist for a Foreword INDIES Award in the Religious (Adult Fiction) category. He is author of six books of poetry, including A Mouse Among Tottering Skyscrapers: Selected Yiddish Poems (Bibliotek fun der haynttsaytiker Yidisher literatur/Library of Contemporary Yiddish Literature, 2017). Preparing to Dance: New Yiddish songs, a CD of nine of his Yiddish poems set to music by Michał Gorczyński, was released by Multikult Project in 2014. Taub was honored by the Museum of Jewish Heritage as one of New York’s best emerging Jewish artists and has been nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize. With co-translator Ellen Cassedy, he is the recipient of the 2012 Yiddish Book Center Translation Prize and the 2014-2017 Modern Language Association's Fenia and Yakov Leviant Memorial Prize in Yiddish Studies for Oedipus in Brooklyn and Other Stories by Blume Lempel (Mandel Vilar Press and Dryad Press, 2016). His short stories have appeared in Hamilton Stone Review, Jewrotica, Marathon Literary Review, Second Hand Stories Podcast, and Verdad Magazine. His website: www.yataub.net To read more by this author: Yermiyahu Ahron Taub: Mapping the City Yermiyahu Ahron Taub: Fall 2011