Two Poems
Estelle Gershgoren Novak
Lot's Wife
She turns
gazing at catastrophe
seeing the forbidden,
the truly terrible.We all remember the story.
She turns in longing
and is transformed
into the salt of her tears.Pillar of salt.
She,
The one embodied here
You know no more
Has taken on the scream,
Become the voice
You hear at night
An echo of your own.She has no name.
She is Lot's wife
She is a pillar of salt. [End Page 182]
Hiding at Noon
I am hiding in my own skin
Waiting inside my voice
For the noon of my being
To chime on
Afternoon's clock.Everything is brightest at noon
In the day's new sunlight
The color of joy is visible
But so also the blood
On the egg shell
And the policeman's gun
Reporting into the air.Everything is visible at noon
If I hide in my skin
And rest inside my voice
Perhaps I can ignore the weeping,
The spent haste,
The blood of noon. [End Page 183]
Estelle Gershgoren Novak was born in the United States to Russian-Jewish immigrants and has lived most of her life in Los Angeles, California. She has published two volumes of poetry: The Shape of a Pear and The Flesh of Their Dreams, and she has had her poems published in journals and anthologies across the United States. This year she collected and published the anthology Poets of the Non-Existent City: Los Angeles in the McCarthy Era.
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