Before even the door is —
It is shut.
To darespeak.
I stepped into – then out of – the family
toasting chayalim at the bris. Invoking soldiers
at a celebration of birth pokes a gun
at life. In biblical Hebrew. No language is safe.
Except dream language.
Poem, in its entirety, is available in the printed version of the current issue.
Bio:
RONNA BLOOM is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently A Possible Trust: The Poetry of Ronna Bloom, selected and with an introduction by Phil Hall (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2023). Her poems and essays have appeared in Brick, the New Quarterly, and Queen’s Quarterly, among other periodicals. In a Riptide will be published by Brick Books in 2025.