Risk Factor
After the reading, a young Jewish woman
asks me if criticizing Israel in my poetry
risks diminishing my family’s love for me.
Like, how might I piss my sisters off
to the edge of exile & still will
the truth? This isn’t Fiddler on the Roof
but fear’s a real thing lingering each time
I write a dark word on the white page.
I say something about faith in my mother’s
embrace, & my choice to share little
until it’s out in the world, out of my hands,
a child I did my best to raise & now
Boom! off she goes, planet-bound possibility
of hurting & healing beaded inside
the same body—funny pharmakon—who
can predict? Once I let the poem go,
I’m just an echo, shred of seed no longer
holding root. The question of how
to leave home & stay home in one
life seems a sea-breamed conundrum
buoyed by how we choose to dream.
