Author: 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.
Our Ancestors Are the Stories We Tell
While we await our Sybil and she denies us entrance Demanding the bough of a tree which in our youth Cried out to us—the one of many looked upon— And when received she shows us in Anchises lures us with the dream we dream at dawn Though he was sworn to secrecy, he welcomes us …
The Plague
At first she was alone with wings for hoppingAnd friendsEach had a branch in the tree Then she was starving, she and the othersCrowding the treeAnd grew wings for flying Swarming up with wings bigger than bodyFriend is enemyAll are hungry From above imagining silk in seeds of milletIf soil is dirtThe meal is sweet …