by Joshua Cohen
Denied Jerusalem’s asylum by the Abulafias, begrudged immunity in the Shade, condemned to vagabond on, how he attempts to schnorr all the spoils, all the trapping pelts of the Papacy—but without that pesky Title, without that puny responsibility rub that was both miraculous and, admit it, a bitch. A pain in the prostrate. Frontmensching with his pet stork, this savvy bird with, you’ll excuse me, just a bit of an ego, a bite or peck of a complex, though his only friend he’ll say as if right on cue, his best, how he loves it like the son it’d never deigned to deliver him (though offhours, he argues against its silent grudge, threatens clipping wings, cementing its feet—once again raising the topic of tricks, just a handful, wouldn’t hurt, a little tightrope, juggling herrings, all while riding a tricycle); together, they slum plotz to platz, vagadicht raggy from court to empty of belly, shack shedding its lean to strawpallet, strippeddown to plank to nail at his sandals whether stolen or lost, and so with feet bared to thorn the road again, bloody: following the muds, wherever they take him, you know, he goes with the floes, I’m impressed, God, we all are.
It’s begun snowing again, and the stork flies over him, to keep the freeze from his holy.
It’s the gesture that counts, though it won’t buy them supper.
I meet him on the fly, what do you know. Slowly but not too, make to pass him unknown. My face held down not to respect his fallen estate as much as it’s my begging not to be hassled. Just another fellow traveler, I’m trying for…yet another wayfaresharer, we’re all related somehow, somewhere, down the road a turn or so, one town overed. Only thinking, as I leave him what a shtarker with his stork, unkempt and I think also kronk, it’s unfortunate, always regrettable…what can I do, he’s my kind but not my type.
Wish I could, bless him.
Then thinking, as he’s gone disappeared, reborn into nothingness, into the dim that always accompanies and yet is itself nothingness, too: the night, as voided by night…and then, by the darkening of night with a storm, this windwhip, such a merciless fire and fall—was that a wink, maybe…how he might’ve winked, then again maybe not, a mote of muck in the eye, a mite of whirling weather. I heard no words from him, though, as if I could speak one in return…and there were no signs exchanged, neither secret handshakes, nor any hermetic knowledge passed; it’s wishful thinking—next time, we’ll prepare. In passing, I’ll say I felt only a chill, a clasp gusty…how to account, and yet how not to: I’m sorry, but I think he tried to pick my pocket. For what, for passing—all of nothing, nihilum.
To embolden, I lash my back with a final foreskin, trailing scrappily from behind me devilforked as if a tail: sheddingly shod with holes and pincer pricks and stinger rips and smudgy tears as if from ink or ash but holes…the serpentine sprig falls now, becomes furled into a cloud, eluding all grasps, dispersing toward a summit. I only go with it, then, north by east, meaning irrespectively up…in an ascension mundane, only another form of high left for luft, the irreparable air—then without grounds going still dazedly, dizzily, further. At the height of the mounding, if that, too, can be believed: shaky as it is, founded unsound, with the mudmix slinging around…sloppily fluming, a mess—there’s an opening. Here above the horizon, a hole—it’s a door I think, it’s a window; delineated skyspace, a demarcation skyscaping; an air escaped, set aside: an old provocation imposing anew, the idea that the window’s the hole in the sky, or that the sky’s the hole in the, you understand, exhausted. Is the window that that’s bound? or is the window that that is around the bind? just asking, just asking.
Here’s where the Pope’s coming from: this tickytacky woodenchair militantly straight of back, in which to rest a while amid the remains of its neighboring pissedupon fire (one leg of the chair, the northeastern, had been amputated, then snapped for the kindle), set atop this peak sheltered from the face of the wind, sheltered from the very faces of the wind’s northern face and the wind’s eastern face, by this lone wall white as it’s been so far faceless, save presently set with that window without glass I’m imaged both into and out of at once, my reflection in the rise of the sun through the morning—as the Law had been handeddown upon that lesser mountain, the least of them no more than a paunch or early pregnancy, a mere bump or stump’s crop, and there with each of its spattered tablets understandable to all right to left, why not, but left to right also, scribed to our scrutiny from the burst cheek of every wind that’s both weather and the breath of weather’s God, graven with fire by the foremost finger of That force mediating in a nailed incarnation, too, don’t you know? And the only way to pass is to pass through it, to the nothingness just…only a burl of cloud, parting. I arise and make the last step, from the chair wobbled to lean against this wall lifting myself onto the wall, creaky the chair’s giving beneath me—as I lunge, make a leap, to snake through the sill unglassed, to worm headfirst over the hunch, and then through it such hurt, slicing myself to flame on the sill, its knifely edge, a sacrifice of self here at gut…a humpwound, it’s like birthing; I’m bowed to pierce at myself, at the window and wall, with my horns. A glow from under the saggy flag of my—womanhood, blood burning to grease passage over, my arms now and legs now and balance, just balance, meet me halfway…to raise my horny head upon the Other Side, and then—to behold.
The Last Supper
A recipe for Baked Mother…rest assured, it serveths all of her son(s), whatsoever be the number.
Ingredients:
1 Mother, preferably yours
(others’ maketh for a poor substitute)
3 Onions, their size depending on size, weight, & structure of Mother
Olive oil, with which to anoint
Salt, kosher
(don’t her wounds deserve it?)
Instructions:
Purify
Shaveth
(everywhere)
Then slay:
Slaughtereth her with a knife, ritually only if the most mere overture to kashrut’s desired.
If not, then gaseth, bullet (to temple only), but let’s not be crude: we know, don’t we, that the methods are all out of bounds, which is to say…boundless—the outermost limits of resentment, the strain of our memory bordered by memory, it’s always memory, it’s always…
Imagination surely helpseth.
Be creative.
Though be sure to causeth as little damage as possible to the flesh. Be sure to causeth her not much pain.
Note: Drowning imparts a wetness that is undesirable, resulting in a toughness of the flesh (unless she is drownedeth in a brining, or curing, solution. See PICKLED MOTHER).
If you can’t bringeth yourself to kill your own mother, then have another do it, preferably her husband, if your father, or any other immediate relation to the woman (one’s siblings are suggested: remember, however, that money must not changeth hands).
Just prior to the onset of rigor mortis, deeply rubbeth her with salt, then anoint with the oil: anointment should taketh place twentyfour (24) hours prior to serving, during which time Mother should be kepteth at room temperature; then, placeth gently, do not force, the three onions, one each into her mouth, vagina, and the orifice that she calls her “tuchus.”
Placeth in a house of an oven, preheatedeth to 325° F.
Baketh until sunset, or golden.
There is no substitute.
There is nothing.
During baking, anointeth Mother often in her own juices with baster, mop, or favorite sweeping broom.
You might want to consult the maid (you might wanteth a maid).
Carveth, and enjoy (consulteth our chapter on Anatomy, if need be).
Useth teeth and shorn hair for garnish.
Eyes maketh for a most special delicacy.
Do not watch water.
Do not hope.
Note: An interesting flavor may be attained by bakingeth Mother alongside, or underneath—dependingeth on oven capacity—your father, her husband, or grandparents (his or her parents).
Also note, however, that
the flavor of Mother will be significantly lessenedeth the further removed the relation.
Remember that blood must mixeth with its own.
Remember, zachor.
Though never under any circumstances of denial, anger, bargaining, anything whatsoever depressant, attempt this recipe on yourself.
Unless.
Leftovers keepeth well.
Mother is delicious upon the Sabbath, and within the week’s intermediary days—but will always become spoiled before the conclusion of the following Shabbos.
Upon Mondays freezeth, and upon Thursdays thaweth her out, then keep her refrigerated.
To avoideth spoilage, wrap Mother well in both her dresses of maternity, and of wedding.
Do not leaveth her uncovered.
Not ever.
Serveth with sacramental wine.
Let the bottle chilleth between your thighs overnight.
A moon lights full above them, and winter.
While the Kabbalists among us hold that everything in this world is as a mirror of the Other, the next and its everything, which is then not entirely everything—discuss…what’s perplexing (Perplexity being the only named universe, able to accommodate both the Kabbalists and Him) is which is the reflection and which the reflected. Or else, how both are of reflected and reflections beyond.
This, we’ve drunk before.
Our cosmology needs only to ripen a moment—then, all will be done. Finished, kaput.
All this time they’ve been waiting outside, just outside the door.
His house, yours, mine.
New guests, old late. It’s so deeply winter, so lately winter, and yet latening still, it might as well be spring, let’s agree. They’re waiting out in that freezing sheet of fall, sheets, fitted sleet and flattening hail, them the great Huddled, shivering sleepless in a week’s worth of tattered up against the fattily marbled frontsteps: some lean, others squat, leansquat fall lie amid the puddles of stock the weather’s inflicted, infected, cloudorgans, nimbusglands…their kinder, so wellbehaved, even courteous, all would you be so kind as tos and thankyous, can you please pass and I appreciate it in the past they’re fighting again, incorrigible gangs of meat kinder vs. milk kinder they’re rolling a tumble in tantrums of sauce, spatterings, tussle’s splatter, angryred, rage-gravy, sickly slick mixings unstrained, unholy dressings and impure preparations, small heads going uncapped gone uncorked in the chaos, brandnamed I forget, or whether generic, their spilled paste on the sidewalk, a waste, and them, too: they’ve been waiting, waiting, too long they’ve been waiting forever—their salttears, their breadcrumb whining, their pounding on and knockerkneading of doors that open to be only fudged shadows, toffeemocha delight, with their fists raw, their fingernails scratched down to sliced through if not merely nicked flesh upon panes of air whipped up in whirrs of sky’s mixer, air’s whisk…it’s a superflumina out there, and appetizingly enormous, they’re pushing and shoving, forking to knife, tumultuous; all having begun politely enough last Shabbos this’ll end, if ever, if any of them remember to set their timers, which are their tickytock hearts, in limbs pulled from sockets, noodlestretched, dismembered strewn in shallow stinging pools of lemonjuice and lime, citric stagnant at gratings clogged, a flow sewerseeking, the lowest ground amidst such layercaked, panbrowned waste, these remnants sprinkled atop heaps of stems, these spit pits, and seeds, the compost cholent, the sewage let sit. The hot spice of dessert tea scented with excrement, sugary urine. Ones nearest the door, the door the front one scratchedup, tore at desperately, its window fogged to strudelthin dough, were an eternity last week ago trampled to death, then buried under stuffings of humus, heaped far off at the edge of the lawn, at the neighbors’ fence of snakes, posts from whose mouths hang singleservings of signs, the spleening of liver…Keep Out. Private prop. Violators will be, and will always. Out that far at half-&-half, the halved again flow of laneless road—entire families dock at sidewalk to disembark meaty junks, pareved barges they’re hollowedout, scooped from steerage from huge ships of melon unripe and sweet, destined, themselves, for here’s lost Friday, this last Sabbath of Shabbos, all with their own recipes, all of their own recipes, their own ways of doing things by which everything and everyone else is heretically wrong—waiting to prepare, for only the preparation of waiting. Time. They approach, drag themselves dribbling froth along the marzipanly edged path of lawn laid with macaroon slates they arrive at the stoop, step as ingredients supererogatory if inedible, too, to the door. And then the porchlight, a bulbed berry, flicks on in its drupes, and they turn their plated faces Heavenward, awed.
Their appetite’s for in, though—a taste for in only.
A bundled bunch of menschs tight in their suits as if kishka, stuffed derma, threepiece intestinal, they drip the gravying fobs from their cavities, stir the clocks.
Mothers, washing faces of suet and grease, sit sucking the schnapps out of the ears of their kinder.
One innocent son aged much over the interminable last week, stands. Moon laid the egg hatched to darkness, the black of a starless burn.
Then, lightning flashes flank’s vein, illuminates the house: the standing invitation threefloored, forever ripening, its siding all peel and rind stuck together as if with the mortar of honey, too sweet…
Led by this son the perpetually Late muster one last squash altogether: this mass snapping, a thunderous husking, a shelling, the lamblike twisting of necks (there’s a fierce churn from the back, the sidewalk, from the edges of the lawn they fold themselves in, away from the serpented fence, its sticks hissing up at them in the stirring wind, writhing free of their plant to slither at them dumbly, snaking themselves deep into the fruit of fallen apples, getting themselves stuck there, snakes with apples for heads, apples where their heads should be, tongueless, harmless, without fang; without any senses save their slick green lengths, they hiss their slither over one another insensate, collide stupidly, crash their heads of apples up against one another until rodents assemble to rat away at the appled heads, nibble, gnaw, down to the cores, coring down to the dead and the slithering stops, the snakes stiffen again to sticks, to cinnamonbark, utensils without use)…piecemeal poultry, baked breaded chickens peck at one another, pluck each missing which quarter, a drumstick, a wing here, there a thigh—a flightless haunch, schnitzel; menschs chasing the boiled eggs they drop in tripping falls of pigeontoes (oy, so the squish of seasoned squabs); above, gefilte rolled together gefülte out of thousands of their forefishes since smoked out of existence, how they swim along on a stream of fleischig borscht (dairy gust blowing, too, uncleanly coming from the opposite quarter in cream both soured and sweet), slices of candied carrots over their eyes then one set atop each as if a yarmulke, parsley payos, in their wake wisped a fringe with dollops of horseradish cut through with the richness of beets. Gigantic beans droop from their stalks, dripping their sauté of garlic, oil, a pinch me now of overexcitement to overseason the already marinated earth, cooling below. Raisinrocks. Nuts of stone. Glaze of a soil never to shmita. Bound sheaves of noodle propped against the siding skin of the threecar garage. Orphaned opossums, widowed raccoons, lonely squirrels recently unbound from neighboring nutshells if only to face the indignity of lawn and illimitable rangespace, forage in the tenth of scraps set aside for them or mourning. Assembled hold to the windows as if they’re servingtrays silvered by lightning’s knife, then tilt them to reflect into heat what gleam might survive…the screens of summer ripping this spring, the thrum of their mesh in the wind the throating of thunder: bend them into bowls, to collect through their sieve the precipitate wine—the pitpat of sacred Manischewitz, mixed impure with a melt of snow milchig, saltwater teared; this dilute flows down the street, into the looparound, a curbbound reservoir of chilling blush rendered filthy with stirs of wrapper, packaging, shells and yolks, globbed atop with the anoint of oil both vegetable and unhealthily not; (dietetic) seltzer shpritzes up from the scandal of potholes, unpruned danish-pits, bagelvoids of pumpernickel, of
everything and nothing, indistinguishable…gutters run with the blood of cows, overflowing the sidewalk, hunks of dark chocolate, tufts of licorice sprouting through cracks. Moustaches stain a sweep across, they baste, an attentive beardmopping: they’re kissing in as much as they’re able to swallow, it’s fine by us, we won’t tell, any combination, just needs something more, just a touch, a pinch butter or milk or another nonkashered…who’s going to whisper the recipe, the ingredient secret? Indulge, more like divulge. This is holy ground, holied. As much as anywhere, lately. And unburnable, too. Anything’s permissible here, if here—all under the strictest Development supervision, which is the mandate of gluttony usurping yesterday’s underdone glatt…
And the house—its stem pokes high above the Development, a flagpole without flag.
Their hunger is this, only to sleep tight within its peel.
This son, he wanders further, near: the door, it’s peeled open only to Him…only He can peel it, is how it can be said from the other side, from within—unlock the pericarp, up its windowshade…Him the taster, He who savors, Him to sample prospect for the rest; other hopefuls are stacked in failure at the stoop, exhausted atop the organ of the welcomemat, a lung, wheezes Shalom. Door peeled tightly behind Him with a last spurt of zest, as if a final whetting, a sharp cleansing taste of what’s to come that only hungers, humiliates more…He’s determined, to be squeezed into the ineffable core: hands modest in their pockets, mouthpocket shut tightly around His tongue, not wanting to partake, not yet, He’s not yet worthy, must merit the merit He’s already been given, has been born to, before…walks through the fruit of the house, the homefruct, its wedges separating under His feet, His steps raising nectar to seep through the hallways of His wander, to seep as the very hallway of His own worming, imperfecting, impure; His writhe to tail behind Him the threat of no exit, the trail of irreversible pour; this dragged juice almost to drown Him in sweet, in the rottenly sweet and, too, in His own secretions, the wordless but salival…the hallways that separate the sections, ending in peel; He’s slipping, regaining footing, exhausted with stick, the nectary cling of His panting, of breath heated as sweetened, steaming, then a slide into the fruit itself, its very sacs full and fouling, facefirst He’s entering slowly, emerging even slower and dripping, slowed in mold, its fuzz attendant upon bowed brow, at His own pits, His heavy sex then around the tiny stems of His nipples…Him subsisting on the wet of the air through His nose as His mouth’s still set shut, refusing to know the fruit for the sake of sustenance, its and His own—sustenance that’s refused as it’s not yet enough: to deny, to limit, must save Himself, not to eat us all out of house, out of home…no, it’s that there’s only one nourishment He’s thirsting, this single savor He’s after redemptive, and it’s not to be found inventoried on any presently pulped shelves, out of stock. After a time, He finally arrives: a clip of the coupon, a swipe, then a quick counting of change, day the seventh, Shabbat. In this—the inmost sanctum of fruited dwelling: the altar of the putamen, the stoneheart, rockempty, then grown from it, to hold it void for His presence and only His sought, Him alone…eventually, now: into this space hollowed out amid the kissing of pure fruit all around—to enter into its womby air; then, to dwell inside it, forever, as its only life…as its seed.