It Is As Though

POETRY

By Moriel Rothman-Zecher

Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzia 58b:12 (“He who blanches the face of another…”)

We laughed, like pre-teenaged jackals, when the piece of shit fell out of his shorts one practice, we looked—stop seeking absolution in the first person plural—and laughed. He was poor and heavy, so had upon his body neither the shield of power nor sex—fuck your hifalutin poem-blather. We were glad to not be him. The shit fragment on the pale gym floor was so bare and bright we—you—could barely stand to look at it— How about you don’t write about me at all. Instead how about you march me toward the expanses of soft blue foam-padded walls, go jackals, go—so then I killed him. His name meant “friend.” He was 12 years old. His shoulders caved inwards. His light Semitic eyes clouded over with the knowledge of betrayal.