Bava Batra 121b
This could be a good day.
If? If.
If a whole generation stops dying.
Stops?
Finishes. Completes the process.
We’ve all been waiting.
And the prophet tells it like this.
It happened: all the men of war
were consumed and dead.
Look – blessed is he who is good (and) who does good.
Prayer in the form of a Venn diagram.
Is there proof? A proof: only
what we are promised.
After the war, we will be able to bury the
dead.
Holy holy is the overlap.
Blessed is he who honestly thanks [god] that there is a body left
to bury. Blessed
is he who does the burying.
A handful of dirt, stones on the mounding—
wash your hands,
wash your hands,
wash your hands of,
wash your hands until you are clean enough
to return home to the living, to be with the living, to walk
alongside the living.
And this we will commemorate? A good day. A good day.
Shana Ross is a recent transplant to Edmonton, Alberta and Treaty Six Territory. Qui transtulit sustinet. Her work has recently appeared in Haven Spec, Identity Theory, Ninth Letter, The Dread Machine and more. She is the winner of the 2022 Anne C. Barnhill prize and the 2021 Bacopa Literary Review Poetry competition. She serves as an editor for Luna Station Quarterly and a critic for Pencilhouse. She prefers walking in the woods to social media, so she budgets her time accordingly.
