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1. Jake Marmer
   Member

   These are from almost two years ago, but freshly revised

   Shacharis

   to feel uh to feel uh
   tofeeluh tefillah
   of course uh don’t pray
   repeated words a rubbed off eraser
   and the freestyle’s too much like
                               Dear Diary
   I keep my lips shut
   find the place of brokenness and hang there
   but cant feel broken every morning
   I lay the tfillin and pull up the blinds
   let the plants have some sun
   lids down,
   “i’m not of this world”
   getup check myself out in the mirror
   kick around the bag on the floor
   unwrap

   Shacharis #2

   special sort of dryness – mouth hollows
   like tupperware, hosting words,
   unwanted family members      I like them
   much less than what it means to say them    god’s name – a sound-pit
   trekking through the stomach unprocessed, maybe
   god is the conscious movement between – between another us –
   in a place I’m sort of seeing words get snugger –
   try them again en route thinking bagels for breakfast
   of course another us where’s it
   find the self already sitting unwrapped

   01/25/2008

   Posted 8 months ago #

2. Dena
   Administrator

   I am totally digging the Shacharis 1. I love the way it ends with "unwrap"; the beginning is really strong too. It has that cuteness/cleverness factor, but it is also reading to me kind of like a car that's hard to start. A special type of frustration- like you're not sure if your effort will pay off, but you also aren't sure how much effort you are really putting in.

   Shacharis 2 seems a little, well, snug to me. It's a poem that took me a couple of reads to understand the flow. Like the line, "I like them/much less than what it means to say them" took a while for me to process. I wonder if there might be a way to open it up more, or if the snugness is supposed to be kind of self-referencing.

   Posted 8 months ago #

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