for Corey
1. Traveling to the underworld to retrieve you
I do not know if you are there, but the whole romantic notion
of a journey, a boat, a coin,
a hooded stranger—where were they all
when you lay there slipping downriver
without a boat or a coin to pay for it—
where were they all? Where was I? What kind of coin
would I need, to cross and to come back,
let alone ask for your permission?
2. Grieving you
A sound ceases. It was
an elaborate, persistent sound
both gentle and cutting, heard
by those of us who notice every rustle—
the hum of the refrigerator, the creak of a tree,
an unseen passing of a possum by the storm door,
the sigh of stars that keep on traveling the night sky
ten thousand light-years after death—
and then, like a thirst quenched without asking—your voice;
when it ceased, we were bereft
but the world kept on and kept on.
Do I even have
your permission to speak of this? Do the dead
consent to the grief of the living? What if
it’s a burden? A violation?
3. Asking the Sephirot about miracles
In a world where all suffering is made soft
between the hands of Chesed,
I wonder if miracles are allowed to exist.
I was taught that the dead are ghosts, the dead
are dybbuks that cling to the living
to be purified by virtue—but I think
it’s in reverse:
the living are dybbuks that cling to the dead,
the living are ghosts that haunt and haunt the places
where death could be untruthed; an imprint, a grief-haunting
that can be cleansed by holy melody
that ascends from violins and clarinets
and drums and cymbals and an electric guitar and the wail
of our stories, virtue be damned,
the song that soars us past our mythologies
into a life-death where we can simply be,
where we can simply
share book recommendations
simply
read each other’s stories, simply say
“Please rest,”
but there’s no melody like this. No miracle.
No rebbe.
4. Saying Kaddish
Magnified and sanctified be Their holy name –
but which one? We trans folk often
have many names, and G-d certainly
qualified a thousand times over,
creating us all in Their image. G-d created
for six days without resting, but not a single time an underworld
or heaven, or a purgatory:
no, They let us live.
We, on our own, have learned to haunt each other,
to change each other,
burrow deep into the shadows of each other,
write books, and share them with each other,
and lose the files, and die without a will,
and know the deep and dark and sideways of each other,
and say the words
beyond the breath.
R.B. Lemberg (they/them) is a queer, bigender immigrant from Ukraine to the US. R.B. is an author of six books of speculative fiction and poetry, an academic, and a translator from Ukrainian and Russian. R.B.’s work has been shortlisted for the Le Guin Prize for Fiction, Nebula, Locus, Ignyte, World Fantasy, and other awards. You can find R.B. on Instagram at @rblemberg, Bluesky at @rblemberg.bsky.social, and at their website rblemberg.net.
