Poetry: Golem

I want to unsee it—you at “war”

in olive coveralls & combat boots.

Red Star of David pinned to your beret

at the dinner table, where you chew

me up with your bullet teeth.

Whole cities being decimated

inside your mouth.

This isn’t you.

This is them—the men

who will never know your name,

who patrol the desert landscapes

of your iron dome.

Your clay muscles slapped onto a trigger.

Fight for us, Golem, for this coalition

you can’t pronounce.

A leader who calls for death ( ֵמת)

will always start with the erasure

of truth (ֱא ֶמת ). So don’t forget

yourself. Don’t shoot. Don’t go.

You slam your cup down like an empty

stretcher. Dust at the top bobbing

like apples in the Dead Sea.

I can’t swallow this

you say—my friends, their epitaphs

spilled like fields of pomegranate flowers.

But violence doesn’t unwrite itself,

and I promise change can grow

in even the driest places if you let yourself

grieve, wring yourself out & flower open.

You are no toy soldier.

You are born

of the same flesh & bone.

by Gavriella Gilbert

Poetry Editor Alica Ostriker comments:

Gavriella Gilbert’s poem stands in the long and honorable tradition of anti-war poems from a woman’s point of view, not abstract, but in the persona of a loving sister trying to talk her brother out of becoming a soldier. Her point—and it is an old one—is that he is being manipulated by his country’s rulers. “This isn’t you. / This is them—the men / who will never know your name.” To them he is cannon fodder, he is a golem controlled by a coalition he can’t pronounce, he is a toy. The resoluteness of the voice in this poem is stirring: “So don’t forget yourself. Don’t shoot. Don’t go.” And even more, the love and urgency driving the ending: “You are no toy soldier. / You are born / of the same flesh & bone.” I can easily imagine this poem being enacted around a family kitchen table. Probably everyone who reads it can imagine that. No need to describe the setting; we have all been there.