"faith is both the prison and the open hand / bells on low on high / ring for Augustine tonight"

Missed Poetry Monday last week because I was in the hospital waiting to have a kidney stone removed. So here's a belated High Holiday poem:


Yom Kippur, Taos, New Mexico, by Robin Becker

I’ve expanded like the swollen door in summer
        to fit my own dimension. Your loneliness

is a letter I read and put away, a daily reminder
        in the cry of the magpie that I am

still capable of inflicting pain
        at this distance.

Like a painting, our talk is dense with description,
        half-truths, landscapes, phrases layered

with a patina over time. When she came into my life
        I didn’t hesitate.

Or is that only how it seems now, looking back?
        Or is that only how you accuse me, looking back?

Long ago, this desert was an inland sea. In the mountains
        you can still find shells.

It’s these strange divagations I’ve come to love: midday sun
        on pink escarpments; dusk on gray sandstone;

toe-and-finger holes along the three hundred and fifty-seven foot
        climb to Acoma Pueblo, where the spirit

of the dead hovers about its earthly home
        four days, before the prayer sticks drive it away.

Today all good Jews collect their crimes like old clothes
        to be washed and given to the poor.

I remember how my father held his father around the shoulders
        as they walked to the old synagogue in Philadelphia.

"We're almost there, Pop," he said. "A few more blocks."
        I want to tell you that we, too, are almost there,

for someone has mapped this autumn field with meaning, and any day
        October brooding in me, will open to reveal

our names—inscribed or absent —
        among the dry thistles and spent weeds.


Disclaimer: I am not Jewish, but I live in a Reform Jewish-observing household. Also, I am not in Taos, but I live in the state next-door. And yes, doors do swell and tighten during the summer rainy season.

---L.

Subject quote from "Augustine," Vienna Teng.

Dear Yulemouse 2017

(Context: Yuletide is an annual fanfiction gift exchange for fandoms with relatively few fics, notable for its large number of participants and the high average quality of stories. I'm participating again this year, once more offering and requesting only public-domain fandoms.)

Dear Yulemouse,

Thank you for offering to write in at least one of these fandoms. They are awesome, and you are too. I can only hope you enjoy writing a story as much as I will reading it -- for certainly, there will be squees ringing off the mountains when it arrives given, dude, it's in a fandom I wanted.

The best way you can please me is if you have fun. Wit, sex, dramatic irony, and cracktasticly silly rom-com are all possibilities, but go with whatever floats your boats. Gen, het, slash (including femslash), and poly are all great. As a limited guide to the sort of things I like, my stories on AO3 is as good as anything. Turn-offs (do not want!) are humiliation-based humor, sadism, and torture in general. Find something and make it your own, the thing you love writing, and it's easy odds I'll like it.

The rest of this expands a little on my Optional Details Are Optional, with comments on possible resources.

( Tang Dynasty RPF )

( Tale of the Bamboo Cutter )

( The Ballad of East and West )

( Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio )

---L.