A Literary Magazine in Support of the Jewish Community
"What the Brown-Driver-Griggs Hebrew and English Lexicon Says" by Michael Getty
What the Brown-Driver-Griggs Hebrew and English Lexicon Says
look up הוד — hod
in the Brown-Driver-Griggs Hebrew and English Lexicon
and the entry will say
splendor
vigor
majesty
if you stay
and earn its trust
in small, quiet hours
glosses will start to emerge from hiding places
in the innards of cracked typeface
long-held meanings of wanderer tribes
will stumble out, blinking in the sunlight
resonance they will say
roar they will say
and suddenly hod begins to gush
about the desert it has never seen but can’t forget
back where everything began
and there it’s a different story entirely
there words spawn like perch
in the channels
that flood
with
each
drenching
rain
and splendor is a thing of crackled hide
that throbs with the memory of submersion
and vigor is the power of a single voice
to bridge horizons
where of course god spoke because where else is it quiet enough?
where else but in a desert can majesty lie flat and low
and leave you no choice but to hear
in the letters of your bones
in the rush, rush, rush of your pulse
the roar
the resonance
the majesty
Michael Getty
Michael Getty is a Canadian-American writer who lives with his husband in St. Paul, Minnesota. His work has appeared in publications such as Willows Wept Review, Space and Time, SEISMA, and Minyan Magazine. His poem, "The Inner World of the Cabbage," was a finalist for the Monarch Queer Literary Awards.
