‘Dark Rabbit’ and Other Poems by Betsy Rosenberg

PN Review 219, September - October 2014

Dark Rabbit

Dark rabbit of the arbors
and warrens of grammar,
I tell you in a language soft as grapes,
duly humbled by your tremor of a smile
I will spring after you now
into a world that knows me
when I speak.

Meroë

Hey you,
pitifully aloof among
the geese of the gaggle,
the sporty mallards,
the pheasants,
and the varicolored hens
you would impregnate if
they would have you
(but they won’t)
and when I walk by
the animal corner
where cabbages grow
I rejoice to see you
lost among them

You who were transformed
into a turkey for
abandoning me,
last week I watched you
gobble-gobble furiously
at everyone in sight
then yesterday you were
lolling by the fence
your beak gently touching
the first in a row of  
slumbering ducklings
and I smiled
a selfless little smile
so I couldn’t be that bad.

Note: Meroë is the witch in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses (The Golden Ass) who turns her faithless ex-lovers into animals.

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Balaam to His Ass

Here’s the thing, says
Balaam to his ass
outside the coffeehouse,
They are Mesopotamians like us –
why dissemble –
and yet to hear them sing those
cloying resonances of the north,
fire in the hearth
wolves in the forest
who could foretell they’d
sprawl like drunkards
on the divan
among the hajjis and
traveling dervishes such
love songs of the
flesh and soul
fitting their Hebrew words
to our tunes, and yes,
I bless when I would curse them
East and West.

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These poems are taken from PN Review 219, October 2014. Further contributions to the magazine by Betsy Rosenberg are available to paying subscribers.