Towards a Progressive neo-Hasidism
Art by Liora Ostroff
New Verses from the Garden:
Seven Midrashic Poems
Dick Westheimer
Eve In the Garden
Her back is bare and run with sweat
down to the curve of her hip. She’s on her knees,
pulls dock and chickweed from the berry bed.
and points to a new shoot and tells me
this is where the new fruit will be borne
come autumn. She pinches off the primocanes
and pricks her calloused finger on a thorn
wipes it clean and turns to tell me once again
of escaping Eden, where all the produce
is picked from bins. “The grocery, you mean?”
“Yes,” she said, licking the blood from her bruised
hand. The two of us stood there in the heat,
she called me Adam and I called her Eve. For all
these years we’ve believed we could avoid the fall.
Eve Corrects the Record
I first knew I was naked,
not from eating the apple,
but from climbing the tree
the god forbade me.
My hair snagged, I bruised
my hip, abraded a breast
and my left knee ached
after I scraped it on the bark.
The fruit I wanted was
on the highest limb. It was not
the largest or reddest and
was blemished and half-eaten
by worms and birds. But it
had seen what was above
and I wanted the same. I know
now this is what the god
had forbidden. He was afraid
I’d find out: We are not alone.
There are so many lights
out there as bright as he is.
Eve’s First Bite of the Apple
Here’s what I know. The flesh of this thing
gives way to my teeth just as the tender
parts of me do to my own touch. Both sluice
so sweet, move me to tremble and breathe
in ways that break words. And now I know why
the god has forbidden them. He (and maybe the man)
must not want me to know what grows in the earth
of me absent their hand on the plough.
Adam’s First Bite of the Apple
This fruit helps me know
you are more than the god
led me to believe. This apple
is mere fruit but you, dear Eve,
are the tree.
The god will call this evil
because you have shown
me something he can never
feel: That the sap rising
in you makes the sap rise
in me.
Adam is Confused
The god told me that this woman
was made of me. But now I see:
She is made of stars. She is the tree
and the fruit. Now I must choose.
Do I take the meat the god gives me
and lord over the Eve, or do I go
with her and leave this Eden:
Eden, the place that allows
the god to loom, makes me
the kind of beast he commands?
The Serpent Speaks to the God
I know why you are an angry god.
You are frightened that I will tell the Eve
your secret, that you too sprung
from Adam’s rib, that she will
un-name all of your beasts.
You think you can punish them
but they will be their own scourge.
They will know each other in ways
that will enrage you, take such pleasures
in each other that you can never know.
They will make all of their own pleasure
and use your name to punish and possess,
to ravage and to be ravishing.
The Serpent Speaks to the God Again
Dear friend, step down here
among us. The Eve has made
this place sweet by eating, she
shares with the Adam the juice
you would deny them because
from your throne, you deny
yourself. Join us here. Put down
roots.
Dick Westheimer
Dick Westheimer lives in rural southwest Ohio with his wife and writing companion, Debbie. He is winner of the 2023 Joy Harjo Poetry Prize and a Rattle Poetry Prize finalist. His poems have appeared or upcoming in Only Poems, Whale Road Review, Rattle, Abandon Journal, and Minyan. His chapbook, A Sword in Both Hands, Poems Responding to Russia’s War on Ukraine, is published by SheilaNaGig.
