Burnt Now I know, I know. I know that I can sit with this burn. My mouth is blood, my teeth are flame. I will drink glass after glass of mezcal, until the spirits take me. Yesterday at lunch they gave us a dessert of thin white wafers, burnt sugar sandwiched in between. I felt burnt when someone told me what they were, and then surprised I hadn’t seen. But what do I know of that many-faced god and all his pomp and glow? I was given only one God, who speaks in riddles, burns. I am that I am, I said to a friend late last night, putting myself to bed in bad spirits, chasing wrong turns. The fireworks go all day and night, celebrating a saint. Once I visited the tomb of a tzaddik, but that world was burnt, there are no spirits now in sight. When I go to shul the singing is a weight. The Sabbath Queen has been put to the stake. I remember Friday nights, after the blessings, watching the week burn away. And now my god has nothing left to say. This year on Yom Kippur I marked the day with sin, so as not to be written in the book of life. All that month, balanced on a knife, more fireworks, strife. I know that I can sit with this burn. I have had many years to learn. I burn, but I am not consumed, and I do not need your saints, entombed. A great miracle happened here. The light returns, and fortified with spirits I go back to my room.
— amy isikoff newell
burnt