The Red Door: A dark fairy tale told in poems

The story starts at a Jewish funeral.

fist after fist fills with cool damp earth

It travels to Israel:

at ben-gurion airport here she comes hauling her baggage rendered clumsy by her burden beneath that smooth brown skin that halo of thick coarse hair the plantation and the shtetl live in blood and memory

her passport names her tirzah persephone horowitz after an aunt on her dad’s side who died so young in the camps and her mother’s favorite greek myth but to call her tirzah is too much like uncovering her nakedness like speaking aloud the holy name

and the holy city of Tzfat…

i am a city of song plucked strings of a lyre loud brassy klezmer throbbing techno beats shoes clop-clopping on cobblestone tires screeching on the asphalt river winding round my peak

It features monsters…

terry loves monsters loved them since her first pimples and pubes sneaking dracula under the covers wondering what it would be like to feel a vampire’s fangs on her neck to taste human blood in her mouth to transform into wolf or bat or mist but dracula always dies staked and beheaded by good christian men because magic and mystery must not survive

And it ends…

No. That would be telling.

© 2022 Ben Yehuda Press (Rafbók): 9781963475173

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Rafbók: 5 september 2022