Bio
Rachel Heimowitz is an emerging poet living in Israel. My poems have appeared in Poetica Magazine, Bare Hands Poetry, Silent Revelations, have been anthologized in Voices Anthology 2012, and will be upcoming in Poetry Quarterly.
Rachel Heimowitz
A Psalm to God's Hands
"You open Your hand and satisfy the desire of every living being" (Psalms 145:16)
Your two fists, suspended in front of me, compact
as December bulbs, ready for the dark, winter soil,
and me, the sorcerer, who with a simple tap
can make them turn, acquiesce, uncoil.
Or could I peel Your fingers back like an artichoke, frond
by frond, to see my heart nestled among the dark layers?
Or will I need to run my tongue over Your yawning palm
to taste the ruddy, salt-sweat magic of my own desire?
Durga, Ganesha, Jesus, Hashem? Your fingers blend
into a child's rhyme of church and steeple, bend and separate
again, and I scratch at frozen ground I cannot penetrate,
naive of what this choice of hands might portend,
as first one fist, then the other unlock in the breathless air
and You turn Your palms to face me, open, empty and bare.