The Plague

Sharon Portnoff

At first she was alone with wings for hopping
And friends
Each had a branch in the tree

Then she was starving, she and the others
Crowding the tree
And grew wings for flying

Swarming up with wings bigger than body
Friend is enemy
All are hungry

From above imagining silk in seeds of millet
If soil is dirt
The meal is sweet

On the banks of the Nile we remember
The worm
The caterpillar that, perhaps,
Buries its eggs in the locust

Sharon Portnoff

Sharon Portnoff holds the Elie Wiesel Chair in Judaic Studies and is associate professor of Religious Studies at Connecticut College. Her poems have appeared in Midstream, The Wallace Stevens Journal, The Poetry Porch, and the collection Rumba Under Fire: The Arts of Survival from West Point to Delhi, ed. Irina Dumitrescu (Punctum, 2016). Poems are forthcoming in Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly and Moment.


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