Poems that you love

[RiverNotch]

appealed to my vanity thrice: the second part of my first name is Reuel, at this point my bible-madness is well-published, and the tone of the poem went the places i want to go, in an order which i love: first sticking with the usual, old-testament weight, undercutting that with some sardonic quip, then gradually twisting the knife to the sharp (garnet light), the weighty (samuel versus basemath), the grand (abraham, and especially the last stanza). all the love

BIBLICAL ALSO-RANS


Hanoch, Pallu, Hezron, Carmi,
Jemuel, Ohad, Zohar, Shuni:
one Genesis mention's all you got.

Ziphion, Muppim, Arodi: lost
in a list even the most devout skip over
like small towns on the road to L.A.

How tall were you, Shillim?
What was your favorite color, Ard?
Did you love your wife, lob?

Not even her name survives.
Adam, Eve, Abel, Cain--
these are the stars crowds surge to see.

Each hour thousands of Josephs,
Jacobs, Benjamins are born.
How many Oholibamahs? How many

Mizzahs draw first breath today?
Gatam, Kenaz, Reuel? Sidemen
in the band. Waiters who bring

the Perignon and disappear.
Yet they loved dawn's garnet light
as much as Moses did. They drank

wine with as much delight.
I thought my life would line me up
with Samuel, Issac, Joshua.

Instead I stand with Basemath, Hoglah,
Ammihud. Theirs are the names
I honor; theirs, the deaths I feel,

their children's tears loud as any
on the corpse of Abraham, their smiles
as missed, the earth as desolate

without them: Pebbles on a hill.
Crumbs carried off by ants.
Jeush. Dishan. Nahath. Shammah.


~by Charles Harper Webb
from LIVER (University of Wisconsin Press)