And There Was No Strange God With Him

by Shunit Mor-Barak

Was that you? He asks the Word
and presses an earth-raw tongue
to shape the golem’s closed eyes, to eat away
the crumbs of Vltava River clay

from stillborn brow – he speaks
the Teveth wind aloud
to shatter the riverfrost
and wake the ash within the waste

howling wilderness – Was that you?
He asks the earth, his god, the wind,
seeks the word of clay
that will leave a smear of mud on his lips

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Shunit Mor-Barak is a writer of fiction, poetry, and the occasional online graphic novel attempt, in both mainstream and sci-fi/fantasy genres. She is a dedicated teacher at Santa Rosa Junior College, a fan of Renaissance Faires and masquerade balls, and wife to a brewer of fantasic mead and beer. In short, she inhabits a world much like this one, in which coincidence is heavy with significance, and every life overflows with ignored magic.

Photography: a detail of a tombstone at the Jewish cemetery in Prague, by Sergio Morchon.