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Jill Alexander Essbaum

Jill Alexander Essbaum Books

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Heaven

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Hausfrau

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“Yes, you do hate Switzerland. And," doctor Messerli paused for effect, "you love it. You love it and you hate it. What you don't feel is apathy. You're not indifferent. You're ambivalent." Anna had thought about this before, when nights came during which she could do nothing but wander Dietlikon's sleeping streets or hike the hill behind her house to sit upon the bench where most often she went to weep. She'd considered her ambivalence many, many times, and in the end, she's diagnosed herself with a disease that she'd also invented. Switzerland syndrome. Like Stockholm syndrome. But instead of my captors, I'm attached to the room in which I'm held captive. It's the prison I'm bound to, not the warden. Anna was absolutely right. It was the landscape. it was the geography. The fields, the streams, the lakes, the forests. And the mountains. On exceptionally clear days when the weather was right, if you walked south on Dietlikon's Bahnhofstrasse you could see the crisp outlines of snow-capped Alps against a blazing blue horizon eighty kilometers away. On these certain days it was something in the magic of the atmosphere that made them tangible and moved them close. The mutability of those particular mountains reminded Anna of herself. And it wasn't simply the natural landscape that she attached herself to emotionally. It was the cobblestone roads of Zürich's old town and the spires of this church and the towers of that one. And the trains, the trains, the goddamn trains. She could take the train anywhere she wanted to go.”

MountainsSwitzerlandNatural BeautyAlpsZürichForeign WifeForeigner In SwitzerlandHausfrau
Author:Jill Alexander Essbaum
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“When the Kingdom Comes Your mother is not your mother, she is something else, a bird nesting in the heart of a hollowed out tree, a saint whose skin is cool and soft as apple-flesh, the will of God. And your brothers are not your brothers, they are the ash that is all of us, scattered in its periphery, unfortunate multitude. Your sister, your lover, your friend none of these are yours. The stone belongs only to the river which bled it smooth. What you call your face, that canvas of mercy which smiles with grief at even November's drizzle and chill, is the face of someone else, someone to come, good tidings, the Christ child in a stable, cooing as Mary tends such tiny hands. It is her face that seems so familiar, the answer to everything whetting the tip of your tongue. The hairs on your head, they belong only to themselves, and when they are done with such a manner of belonging, they offer themselves to stars which outnumber them galacticly. Everything you think is yours is not. A father had two sons, and one of them was heavy with desire. Friend—what's lost is found, forever. You will wear the very best robe. You will wear rings on every finger of each hand. And they are not your hands. They are God's hands and She formed you with them Herself turning tricks with clay until finally the sand sang alleluia, and it was good. These hands, She will hold like treasure all the way to Paradise, where under the glimmer of the moon and the spark of light that fuels every prayer, She keeps her family. And we will all be there. And we will all be.”

PoetryHeavenPoemJill Alexander Essbaum
Book:Heaven
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“Thirty-Three If the martyr is made when the breaking heart breaks open, and one holds in the crib of her palm the ghost of something as singular as last night's argument, then what was mystery is worse—the advent of the end. They sleep in the sea of a bed, blue as breath, the tangle of needle-net holding them close. And if they dance, it is like lanterns on a lake, as nothing lasts for very long, so frail, those passive vessels. Imagine the elemental glow and a city of stars still forming, the work in progress of heaven like the swirl of color in a vanity rose: where one shade ends the other may begin, or not, its own red. She scowls her lover's scowl. When Christ comes down from the mountain, he marches to Jerusalem unaware. This is how the dead get by, and the dying make due: like anyone, they are preserved with such affection as to disenchant their grief.”

PoetryHeavenPoemJill Alexander Essbaum
Book:Heaven
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“Rib I frown because you frustrate me, your wooly, muffled voice, and the dishes that will not do themselves. I have traded word for weary word with you and come up short so many sentences, that I am broke from paying attention. Maybe I have treated you badly. I am sorry if I have treated you badly, but other men have worn me out, and I no longer make love, it will not last. So if I linger at the arcs of your chest, we shall call it mere tenderness, or homecoming. And if I happen to write sonnets in the honor of us, I will not drown you in burdens of marigolds, rather clay, a kiss or two, some serpents looking on. I am near useless here, and if I cross myself, it is only because I am that lost, with nothing left to do for my hands.”

PoetryHeavenPoemJill Alexander Essbaum
Book:Heaven
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“Heaven To live well under this dark shadow, it takes deep breathing and a resolution, for here it is monstrous cold, and the wind has teeth as large as testament. I wrap a sweater around the sleeve of my soul, and night after night, I sit and I stare at pumpkins, at the moon, at roses falling short of themselves. They are thorn and mere bloom, and I no longer know if they are beautiful, just as I no longer know if I am beautiful, and whether I am or I am not, I do not know if it matters, if it ever did. Nevermind. I am still as uncertain, or at least just as chill as this gray sky above, and that one cold hope success, below, and this unsavory room of waning passions in between. I wanted to make music or love, and having the talents for neither, I settled on both. Do you see these scars? They bear the teethmarks of the angels.”

PoetryHeavenPoemJill Alexander Essbaum
Book:Heaven
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“The Coming When apple-birds have drowned themselves in milk, the old bones take it well. They gather smoke to ink the mountainsides with letters of regret. And when the moon burns through its orbit, men take cover in cramped rooms, while all the dead begin to roil within the ground. And as He comes, the night completes itself. The end arrives as if a telegram, in series, inconsolably. And if they wish to suckle the Messiah's breast, it is too late, He's dry. Look to the stars— a trumpet and a train conclude the sky.”

PoetryHeavenPoemJill Alexander Essbaum
Book:Heaven
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“Tongues of Fire This is what's become of us: I am confused by mourning, and he is the sun that goes to sleep on top of me, undone by moonrise. Lover, all I speak is iambs and slant rhyme. That devil lamb of light called hope is sacrificed and none too pleased with having lost its bleat. The stone has rolled away but God's not gone and damn it, I'm no fan of the weather here, it rains too often, bones of doves and angel down until the ground stains red with sighs and blood. It is wet and cold. Will you explain again the why of all there is and how he caught me in the act, discovering God?”

PoetryReligionHopeHeavenPoemImageryFigurative LanguageJill Alexander Essbaum
Book:Heaven
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“Paradise This bridge of moon on bended knee above us keening twilight and the snake that is your tongue has taught itself to sing, to sing. My hand so heavy with your hand, your eyes brimmed curve to crease with grief, and you chant Bread will be the body of a king, someday. With a voice like every nectarine, so lovely and so bruised, how I am tempted to you, famished as a rite of spring mid-winter underneath the tricky snow, broom-cold, tripping fig over foot, husky and nervous as the glassy oxen, staggering. Remember, I am but a rib. I curve into your spine and wrap about your heart, fleshless as marrow, your vitreous darling.”

PoetryReligionHeavenChristianityPoemAllusionJill Alexander Essbaum
Book:Heaven
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