The First Light of Chanukah: Introducing the Poetry of Joy Ladin
“Take the candle.” the therapist tells me, “Carry it into your deepest body and shine the light in the hidden places, in the painful places.” My eyes are closed; my feet have been firmly grounded and in my meditation I am thinking about the poetry of Joy Ladin.
I first heard about Joy in an article about a professor tenured at Yeshiva University who transitioned from male to female. Who, I wondered, was this giborah (warrior) willing to stand up to an Orthodox Jewish institution where the belief is that even a tattoo can blemish the sanctity of the body? This was the battle of a lifetime, one that Joy had with herself, with her family and eventually with the outside world. Later I would read more about Joy; I would hear her read her poems. And my admiration grew. I learned that after her transition, when she was finally alive in the body that reflected who she really is, did her poems begin to flow.
To know oneself so well. To come as a whole person to the deepest caverns of the body. Joy has so much to share with us in her poems. To light the candle. To bring light deep into the body. Light enough to find the freedom to bring wonder to every word on the page. As Joy does. As you will see reflected in this first light of Chanukah in these beautiful poems. Light. The glow of wonder.
Bordering
I live close to the borders
of what I am
death of course
but also
the fragility of windows
and the greens
deepening behind them
and the moment before
and the moment after
each brimming
with slightly different water
shimmering and silence
Immanence
God is the old woman
and the intersection she crosses
and the lengthening shadowful of past
stuck to her heels
like paper. God’s the physics
that holds her up, the curb
beneath her foot
and the building that towers over her
where God has been broken
into co-op apartments
by the same invisible hand
affording me the luxury
of looking down and over and past
the woman whose shadow
has become her future
because she’s turned her back
on God in the guise
of the afternoon sun
kindling premature blossoms and leaves,
warming the warming
sickening Earth —
that’s God too —
and the sickening planet
of me. 
In the Country of the Father
Little puzzles everywhere
problems to solve
with pulleys and gears
inclined planes
diagrams on yellow pads
washers blowtorch solder
black iron nails
softening in the fire
Ants of feeling
carry many times their weight
to palaces of sand
No afterlife or heaven
but sometimes evenings
bicycle rides ping pong
cold pizza for breakfast
a small green turtle resurrected
after swimming down the drain
Three suns that never set
frustration anger loneliness
Hospital beds
full of fools
happy to be alive
an invariably fatal illness
my father told
I was the last one
on the left
Then we reached the exit
First Mammogram
The trainee tells me my breasts are dense. I try not to take this personally.
It's my first mammogram.
Age, 60. Height, 5’6”. Weight, none of your business.
End of October, in more ways than one.
Not that I'm worried. No family history, and only a decade and a half of estrogen. Of breasts. For fifteen years, I’ve hidden them under fabric. When I walk they ripple like laughter. Every night their eyes stay open, watching over my sleep.
The trainee knows what I am. That this is my official welcome to the sorority of fear she was grandmothered into. Is training to handle with care.
She cups and arranges one at a time, fitting fatty tissue to the machine's line of sight, crushing into focus the only part of me, right now, that matters.
Hold your breath, she says.
The machine stutters through its arc, creating a three dimensional image, one slice at a time. In the corner of my left eye, each slice glows for a moment on a screen, magnified beyond recognition; gender; sex.
I wonder what they look like, the shadows that suggest a mass. Whether the trainee sees me a woman or some other kind of creature who lives in the shadow of those shadows, waiting for them to spread.
Stutter. Slice. Don't move, the trainee says, smiling apologetically, pushing at my breast.
A Recent Case of Covid
I lie on the floor
under an open window
burning and waiting
for rest or rain.
Struggling to breathe.
I dream I’m waking up
so I must have been asleep.
On the thumb-piano
of the fire escape
a finger of rain
falls upon a key. 
Seismograph
Today’s medical news:
a little more of this,
a little less of that,
consciousness reduced
to mortality’s seismograph,
the most interesting needle
in the universe
tracing the universe’s
least interesting events.
Hope doesn’t register anymore,
the occasional shudders of despair
neither alter nor define
the trajectory of the line
that repeats itself each day
without embarrassment
telling a story
that will not be a story
until it reaches the end.
Laughter for you darling girl August 16, 2024 Your laughter startles open like a door I press against like an ear eavesdropping on imaginary horses nibbling sweetgrass inside you squirrels among the stems shyly unearthing one nut after another and on the plash of oars in a body of water the exact blue of the echoes ricocheting across it from a house where a child is still being hurt by people who say they love her barely audible amid the clatter of the train you ride from moment to moment nose pressed to the window of the present swamps and egrets rivers and wrecks ideas for soups you haven’t invented yet swallows that soar and swallows of beer suffused with savory units of international bitterness that tinge and stir the summer of your limbs to another pleasure another kindness another startled laugh
Elul 2023
Jackhammers outside the synagogue—
the men who wield them
can't stop shaking
*
Tree of Life: radiant,
a little worn, ripple
of God in the leaves
*
Yellowjacket taps
against the pane
sensing sweetness within
*
A single strand
of spider silk
bisects the window screen
*
When the jackhammers stop
I hear children
singing
Joy Ladin has published eleven books of poetry, including her latest collection, Family; National Jewish Book Award winner The Book of Anna; and Lambda Literary Award finalists Transmigration and Impersonation. She is also the author of three books of creative non-fiction: Once Out of Nature: Selected Essays on the Transformation of Gender; National Jewish Book Award finalist Through the Door of Life; and Lambda Literary and Triangle Award finalist, The Soul of the Stranger. Her work has been recognized with a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Fulbright Scholarship, among other honors. Her work is available at joyladin.com.
Delights!
5 Tiny Delights:
The first sip of black coffee
Venus growing brighter as the nights grow longer
Squirrels doing anything
Billie Holiday's "Body and Soul"
Issa's haiku
5 Tiny Jewish Delights:
Hanukkah lights reflected in a dark window
Waking at 5 in the morning and realizing that it's Shabbat and I can go back to sleep
Waking through the crowd of Upper West Side Jews in Riverside Park for tashlich
Wine trembling in a brimming kiddush cup
A buttered toasted bialy
Thanks for offering these beautiful poems by Joy Ladin, a brave and admirable poet.
Beautiful poems!