On the Eighth Day of Chanukah We Enter 2025: the Light of Being Human
What I love most about poetry prompts is the way the prompt mixes with the personality of each poet to create something altogether new and remarkable. Here are fifteen poems out of the more than 200 submissions we received for this issue (Thank you Judith Community!!) I sent out “Light” and I received back all kinds of light: from star-light to morning light to the reflection of light in a swimming pool or on birch trees in autumn. If you look closely though, in poem after poem, what you will really see is that in each and every poem the light is us, its our human experience, its the beautiful light of being human itself.
New Years Resolution
This year I want to be
an upside-down tree, roots
in the heavens and branches
reaching into this world.
This year I want to feel
the sweet dripping of fruit
on my face, water flowing
between my fingers. This year
I want to run my fingers
on the bark of a tree older
than me and my grandmother
and my great grandmother.
This year I want to soften
like the tender skin
of that overripe fruit.
This year I want to split
open. This year I want everything
that is inside to flow out
from the soil, into the sun.
— Margaret Kerr-Jarrett
White Eggshells and bleached flour St. Andrew Beach Mouse Sweet corn Communion dresses and burial shrouds Knuckles in fear Texas Blind salamander Winged doves, a string of pearls, a French manicure, and the insides of radishes Weiss, blanc, lavan, howaido, abyad, valkea, vit Snow on the Kronotsky Volcano in the Kamchatka Peninsula The Pieta Bog star flower Fog rolling in off the Atlantic The Angel of Death Cannellini beans and garlic The Western hero’s hat A nun’s wimple All of my mother’s hair Much of my father’s That light they claim we see as we reach the end, and what happens when all the colors of the spectrum blend and blur, and the light is reflected back. —Janet R. Kirchheimer
Light In Hand
Last night I offered a child
the moon
then remembered
all I could present
was the new moon
At three
he is newly afraid
of the dark
so clutches a toy bus
in each hand
Here
by the station
the constellations
retreat
from competing lights
I’m also afraid
I tell the boy
and carry sweet bread
in my pockets
to feed the ghosts
Here
is a light
for you to carry
a flashlight
all your own
—Carol Dorf
Ode to a Single Note
Between sets, he laid down his sax and said
someday I want to play a note so beautiful
even God will be healed
and that boy sitting in the back
will ask his parents to give him a saxophone
like I did after I heard Trane
play just one note
I want to play a note so all-encompassing
the starlings will teach it to the other birds
and the possums rooting in my compost
will lift their pink snouts to sing alleluia
and I want to play a note so persuasive
trees will bear fruit in the desert
to feed the hungry
and the temperature will drop three degrees
everywhere on earth and the ice shelf
will grow back in Antarctica and when
I find that note it will be like Joshua
at the gates of Jericho except without
the battle and the only walls
that will come tumbling down
will be those that keep some people
from coming into the city and keep
others from going out
—Susanna Lang
Nocturne As the car radio interrupted, After the night and the music die will I have you? I suggested we sing along, bluesy, You refused. Soft and low, your voice pondered galaxies, “Just talk about constellations,” you said. “For instance, M31 is visible to the naked eye on moonless nights.” Lyrics without melody, a hum, a vibration, And the car radio played, Telegraph cables, They sing down the highway We continued discussing science and stories, like always. I added, “Or, in Greek myth: Andromeda, saved by Perseus from Cetus.” But I wanted to speak of the music of the spheres: if it’s dark and clear, two spiral galaxies are visible, Andromeda and her companion, spinning to songs beyond our hearing. I wanted to see the Milky Way’s accidental dots, Their resonance in concert together. Instead I said, “Too cloudy for stars tonight, but see there, the moon’s glow.” The unsung gravity between us thrummed, sostenuto. —Samantha Landau
What Lights the Room There’s another world, and it is in this one. —Paul Eluard That evening, the pool across the road lit the room a melancholy blue, insistent as the moon, carved claw of light just then entering the window frame. The ghostly hue convinced me the world was much more than it seemed. I already half-believed the things I gathered in my rooms were just pretending to be insensible. I only had to catch them at it, like the figure emerging under the sculptor’s knife, here an eye, there an arm, hair breaking loose from the thick wood like a river finally undammed. Sometimes I watched the cat, entangled in a skein of dream, her white paws twitching. Was she stalking a secret trail of scent, gradually widening to a river, the opening to a den where some elusive creature stirred? I couldn’t see or hear it, but she waited there, hoping for it to emerge. I stalk that something too, when I sit, pen poised above an empty page, with all the words to choose from, and the breath to give them life. —Robbi Nester
Babel Poem
Let us brick bricks and burn for burning
let us bite the bitter hand that feeds the feeding
let us scatter the scattered self in the sham
of heaven no fear not the fire first
black bricks and burn them hard said the earth
to the heavens and God laughed hard so
the dust dusted and the haste hasted the name
a shame it was for HaShem wanted
to mean the meaning in the words
to ward off the word in the mayhem may he
blow below the firm firmament when he comes
may he mix and match the match sticks from the gate
damn you the damned prayed after blessing the blessed tree
—Lisa Grunberger
Barchu —Temple Emanuel Greene Street synagogue, Greensboro, NC Trees bow beyond the synagogue windows, and inside we also bow, singing a prayer no one is permitted to pray alone. The glass in its small panes is clear as water, rippled as a pond shivered by the breeze. As melting ice. As the world seen through tears or memory’s blurring. The very last morning I awoke in our old house, I watched trees toss in blustery April on the hill by the lake. My parents were gone. I think of generations swept away like them, swaying past the glass or in a room like this—ark doors opening, men and women rising. And I, always so shy to praise what is, join with the congregation singing now and forever in the unstained light. —Anne Myles
in/tract/able :: what cannot be touched
a rampage, ramped up for the ages—eras—this area. palestinian. israeli. arab. jew. who
is a t/errorist. a knot of centuries seemingly seamed
and un-knottable. seized under fire—the mind sees fire, embedded, embered in the blood-soaked. then cease fire—
the trade is hostages :: host/ages, children taken/aching—children. what haven’t others, we, done—Oh, father
who taught me God was One, only One—theirs One, too—which One sends
the rocketsbulletsbombs/bastic—caustic whole :: unholy cause
whose side geno /cide—or is it cleansing—clan/singing—can we unclench, unlense the eyes, unlimb the wings, the arm/ors of hate
when justice—just/is—unjust. what mots juste :: never again never holds n/
ever gains—we keep f/licking out the tongues of war, the tong-throngs of weapons
with our means :: what means our :: what means us
—Suzanne Edison
In Fields
You were promised pomegranates hanging from trees, not the names
of captives on passing lampposts. Not sirens howling after dusk, not the aftermath of missiles nor faces of the missing plastered to ancient acacias.
Far away a truck carries loads of pumpkins— how round and orange!—a black cat crosses
my path while birches burn into autumn—
not bodies, not fruit— just rubble blurring in and out of screens—
to where fingers and arms and a lost bear absorb the secrets of fields.
You gather apples that should have been harvested last season.
Near the border there is still an abundance of peppers. You reach the green
ones that sting your eyes when you wipe them, scream names
of the missing — lest they become a whisper,
a disappearing hope
—Dina Elenbogen
We Persist Despite It All
Merriment is not made of light.
Or it is, and as fleeting. False.
I can say I refuse it. The tinkle
of its tiny bells. Meanwhile,
a man inscribes words on bullets:
deny, defend, depose, and shoots
a billionaire insurance CEO.
Still, we want something to lift us.
It’s the holiday season. Birth
of salvation, or light and liberation.
Reclamation in war. And war. And war.
In the morning, the window fogs
when I raise the shades. Body heat
of the night meeting cold glass.
I put my feet into fleece boots.
Dress the dog in coat and harness
like a saddle and its blanket.
We walk over the hoarfrost
leaving marks that will sparkle
in the late afternoon light.
—Subhaga Crystal Bacon
Shamash I want to ask the small flickering flames of the chanukiah, what it feels like to burn straight for eight days and be considered miraculous. Be’eri, Nir Oz, and Kfar Aza know what burning feels like. Re’im and Ofakim understand what it is like to be ablaze, to be buried in ash. How do we bring our shamash to ignite wick by wick and not think of the burning of our sisters and brothers, of the smoldering cities built with left forearms still prickling from tattoo needles? Where is the miracle in the burning? It does not lie in the fire of the Chanukiah— it hides inside the radiating light: the luminescent shamashim that rise from the charred remains again, and again and again. A Phoenix we call a nation. A light that cannot be extinguished no matter the burn. —Talya Jankovits
Case Worker on a City Trolley
A woman wrapped in exhaustion
sinks into the arms of twilight.
Another demurely crosses her legs.
A mare’s nest mumbles in her stockings.
This is the hour of uncertainty,
we look forward and backward.
I lug a dark briefcase, files filled
with others’ sorrows. Walk
into and out of other lives. Some part
of me knows them, but briefly,
and then I leave.
This old trolley barely gets us home
in time, each of us with our own destination.
Perhaps we are nearer than we know.
Look behind that tree, almost hidden,
a body of light watches, waves,
I am here. Here I am.
—Amy Small Mckinney
Empty, Dark, Full, and Light
I wanted to know what it was like to push a baby
out of my body, how big the space was between full
and empty. I liked the idea of saying I did it, wanted
to make time more linear, map out a line
of all the things I had done: this one they pulled,
this one I pushed, this one just came, here I was two
bodies inside one, here I didn’t know how much
blood vessels could swell, and yes, Jerusalem
is a desert, but when there’s another set of skin
and bones under your skin and bones, it’s a million
times hotter. That is to say, pushing out a baby
is like taking off one layer and another
only to find a hollow space that never ends,
empty, dark, full, and light.
—Margaret Kerr-Jarrett 
To Begin Again I am tired of bouncing back up like some cartoon cat flattened by a flat-bed truck moving way too fast down this village lane meant to sustain a slower pace. Tired of being resilient. Tired of being strong. Tired of grace- less nights preparing for what can go wrong. Breathe, they say, but try as I might, I can’t re-inflate: the outline of my body blurs, lungs and heart refuse to operate. My eyeballs swivel from post to post, keeping a vigil, remaining vigilant, seeking air, breathing light. —Betsy Mars
So much to admire as a whole -- some lines from individual poems that hit this morning were "possums..will lift their pink snouts to say alleluia," "all the words to choose from/and the breath to give them life," "try as I might, I can't re-inflate," "now and forever in the unstained light; and "a prayer/no is permitted to pray alone." It can be difficult to think of the human light; these poems help.
Treasuring these beautiful offerings of light. Thank you.