Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    unalone
    unalone
    unalone
    Ebook210 pages2 hours

    unalone

    By Jessica Jacobs

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    “Make a fence, said the rabbis, around the Torah,” reads the first line of Jessica Jacobs' unalone. By the end of this opening poem, however, Jacobs has defined her engagement with religious texts as an act of devotion to living fully in the world’s complexity: “Here, love, is fruit with the sun still inside it. Let me // thumb the juice from your chin. Let us honor what we love / by taking it in.” Structured around the twelve parshiyot (portions) of Genesis, the trajectory of unalone parallels immersion in Jewish teachings with the contemporary world. Whether conversing with the sacred texts she reads or writing from her subjects' perspectives, Jacobs navigates an abundance of experiences: growing up queer, embracing one's sexuality, reversing roles as the adult child of aging parents, wrestling with religious history and the imposed roles of womanhood, exploring how the past foreshadows our current climate crisis, and revisiting the blush of new love while cataloging the profound, though more familiar, joys of a long relationship. 


    Deeply personal and yet universal in its truths, unalone draws on the Book of Genesis as a living document whose stories, wisdom, and ethical knots can engage us more fully with our own lives — whatever your religious tradition or spiritual beliefs. In this stunning and ambitious book, Jacobs reminds us that all poetry serves as a kind of prayer – a recognition of beauty, a spoken bid for connection, a yearning toward an understanding that might better guide us through our days. When you “dive / from the twin heights of your eyes,” “that tiny pool below” isn’t God. “Well, not exactly,” Jacobs comforts us. “It’s you. One breath deeper than you’ve / ever been, one breath closer to the heeded, heedful world.” 
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFour Way Books
    Release dateMar 15, 2024
    ISBN9781954245839
    unalone

    Read more from Jessica Jacobs

    Related to unalone

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    Related categories

    Reviews for unalone

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      unalone - Jessica Jacobs

      ALSO BY THE AUHOR

      Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going

      Pelvis with Distance

      CO-AUTHOR

      Write It! 100 Poetry Prompts to Inspire

      unalone

      POEMS IN CONVERSATION WITH THE BOOK OF GENESIS

      JESSICA JACOBS

      FOUR WAY BOOKS

      TRIBECA

      Copyright 2024 Jessica Jacobs

      No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

      Names: Jacobs, Jessica, 1980- author.

      Title: Unalone : poems in conversation with the Book of Genesis / Jessica Jacobs.

      Description: New York, New York : Four Way Books, 2024.

      Identifiers: LCCN 2023031736 (print) | LCCN 2023031737 (ebook) | ISBN 9781954245822 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781954245839 (ebook)

      Subjects: LCGFT: Poetry.

      Classification: LCC PS3610.A356433 U53 2024 (print) | LCC PS3610.A356433 (ebook) | DDC 811/.6--dc23/eng/20230714

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023031736

      LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023031737

      This book is manufactured in the United States of America and printed on acid-free paper.

      Four Way Books is a not-for-profit literary press. We are grateful for the assistance we receive from individual donors, public arts agencies, and private foundations including the NEA, NEA Cares, Literary Arts Emergency Fund, and the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.

      We are a proud member of the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses.

      CONTENTS

      These sections follow the twelve פָּרָשִׁיּוֹת parshiyot (portions) of Genesis, which are each named for the portion’s first distinctive word or phrase. The notes provide brief summaries of the biblical stories and other relevant sources.

      Stepping through the Gate

      בְּרֵאשִׁית ◦ BERESHIT ◦ (IN THE BEGINNINGS)

      In the beginnings

      And God speaks

      Prayer should be a tunnel

      Creation Stories

      Imposter Syndrome Among the Thorns and Thistles

      Sleepwalkers in the Garden

      Free will

      At Age 969, Methuselah Gives a Valedictory Address

      And the Ground Opens Its Mouth to Speak

      Before the Beginning

      נֹח ◦ NOACH ◦ (NOAH/REST)

      Collective Nouns

      And God speaks

      After the Flood

      Elegy in Prophetic Perfect

      In the Shadow of Babel

      לֶךְ-לְךָ ◦ LECH-LECHA ◦ (GO FORTH)

      Mazel Tov

      Sing, O Barren One, Who Did Not Bear a Child

      How the Angel Found Her

      And God speaks

      Covenant Between the Pieces

      And God speaks

      וַיֵּרָא ◦ VAYERA ◦ (AND HE APPEARED)

      Will not the Judge of the Earth do justice?

      Learning to Run Barefoot in a Dry Riverbed at Dawn

      And God Speaks

      Why There Is No Hebrew Word for Obey

      Kaddish for the Living

      חַיֵּי שָׂרָה ◦ CHAYEI SARAH ◦ (LIFE OF SARAH)

      From the Cave, Her Voice

      And Abraham came to eulogize Sarah and to weep for her.

      Lemme tell you the one that killed at canasta!

      P.O.T.S. Prayer

      The Question I’ve Wanted to Hide

      Saturday Services at the Provincetown Shore

      Ordinary Immanence

      At First Sight, Many Seeings Later

      תּוֹלְדֹת ◦ TOLDOT ◦ (BEGETTINGS)

      The Bravest of the Birds

      In the village of my body, two people

      Comfort Food

      And God speaks

      Joint Account

      וַיֵּצֵא ◦ VAYETZEI ◦ (AND HE LEFT)

      And I, i did not know it.

      Prayers from a Dark Room

      Another Calling

      So Jacob served seven years for Rachel and they seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her.

      Personal Injury Parents

      Measure for Measure

      וַיִּשְׁלַח ◦ VAYISHLACH ◦ (AND HE SENT)

      The Hendiadys of Marriage

      No one’s loves, no one’s wives

      How Many More

      And God Speaks

      Godwrestling

      Perseverance Prayer

      And Her Name Meant Everything from Judgment and Strife to Vindication

      And God Speaks

      וַיֵּשֶׁב ◦ VAYESHEV ◦ (AND HE SETTLED)

      Torn Mind

      Dream in Which I Give You My Memories as Dreams

      When He Was Not

      Wake, you sleepers from your sleep!

      מִקֵּץ ◦ MIKETZ ◦ (AT THE END OF)

      And who are you supposed to be?

      How Long Before

      Sibling Beit Midrash

      וַיִּגַּשׁ ◦ VAYIGASH ◦ (AND HE DREW NEAR)

      Ars Poetica

      Another Kind

      That We May Live and Not Die: A Deep-Time Report on Climate Refugees

      וַיְחִי ◦ VAYECHI ◦ (AND HE LIVED)

      And God speaks

      Jacob’s Gift

      Reciprocity

      Like Water on Its Course

      How to Pray

      In the Breath Between

      Aliyah

      Notes

      To Burt Visotzky

      רב וחבר

      rav v’haver

      (teacher and friend)

      Like the One who has no mouth, who spoke the first letter that has no sound, the biblical word conceals an infinity of meanings.

      —Lawrence Kushner

      To read, to listen, to write, to feel, to fear, to draw courage from others, to take risks, to wrestle with contradictions, to engage with others—this is, indeed, the verb without tenses, the conversation without an end.

      —Adrienne Rich

      Stepping through the Gate

      Make a fence, said the rabbis, around the Torah. And this world

      is lousy with them. More than we can count

      on our dogwalk alone: chainlink and iron and white

      wooden pickets. Fences to keep people’s bad barking dogs

      in, to keep our bad barking dog out. His nostrils flare

      wide as a twirled skirt as he reads the tales of past passersby

      on fences that mark what is another’s burden, another’s

      privilege to tend, and what is open to the traffic of strangers.

      Called up to the Torah, a reader tracks the cramped letters

      with a יָד yad—a metal pointer topped by a tiny pointing hand.

      If it feels colder than the air, it’s because silver steals

      your body’s heat, this tool to keep your place, keep you

      in your place, to keep you from marring even a single sacred letter.

      This, one fence among many: Do not bring the Torah

      in the bathroom, do not sit beside it on a bench, do not stand before it

      naked (lest you be buried naked, stripped of all the good you did).

      But sometimes barriers grow so large it’s hard to see

      what they’re protecting. And here is the fig tree yearning

      past its yard, reaching toward the walk with its fat-fingered leaves.

      Here, the arbor propping branches hunched as the shoulders

      of a weary giant—yet under its slump, an exuberance

      of mulberries. There, the yellow house whose bramble is more

      than worth its thorns: like drops of ink dripping from the branches,

      the blackberries call us to make a quill of our tongues.

      Let every fence in my mind have a gate.

      With an easy latch and well-oiled hinges. The neighbors

      urge us to indulge—There’s more than we can possibly eat—

      so, here, love, is fruit with the sun still inside it. Let me

      thumb the juice from your chin. Let us honor what we love

                                                                           by taking it in.

      בְּרֵאשִׁית

      ≅

      Bereshit

      ≅

      (In the Beginnings)

      In the beginnings

      light needs creating—darkness

      is already here. Commingled,

      this first light looks

      like a sandstorm

             maybe: everything

                      at once: quavering and resonant

                           as a plucked string

                                until God commences the ceremony

                                    of separations—light

                                      from dark, terebinths

                                        from touch-me-nots, Florida

                                          from the Gulf and sea, אָדָם adam

                                          from אֲדָמָה adamah (earth), Adam

                                        from חַוָה Chava (mother

                                      of us all), asps

                                    and whistlepigs

                                and hellbenders

                           from them both. God,

                      who in this beginning

             is אֱלֹהִים Elohim (God of Judgment), knows

      when there is nothing but light, nothing

      can be seen. So now there’s nothing

      unmet by shadow. Knows

      that to say I am

            is to be strengthened

      but also severed

      from all

                        not you.

      Mystics say everything God

      makes is made of God. Creation

      in and of its Creator, just as each of us

      remains our mother’s child: once helpless,

      sheltered, and cradled through the air. But as Brazil was once

      spooned by Cameroon before the continents began their drift—

      who can remember that union? With all things

      separate and their selves, what wonders!

                                           Yet we are left

                                       with such need

                       of connection, bereft

      in all our lonesome splendor.

      And God said, ‘Let there be light!’ and there was light.

      —Genesis 1:3

      And God speaks

      words that enter the world

      as things. Says, אֽוֹר Ohr! (light)

      before מָאוֹר Ma’ohr! (source of light)

      because the word

      is its own illumination.

      Says, Fig tree! and the soil

      ripples with sudden roots

      while the wind finds leaves

      to riffle. Says, Cattle! and there

      is the hot green breath

      of rumination, says, Birds! and

      a white egret paces the bull’s back,

      plucking ticks from his hide. Each word

      carries what it names inside

      and, like a folded paper flower

      blooming in water, finds its form

      in the moment of its speaking.

      And God created the large sea creatures, and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed, after their kind . . . And God saw that it was good.

      —Genesis 1:21

      Prayer should be

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1