With her severed tongue the shewolf
Scoops live water from the jaws of a cloud
And again becomes whole
—“Burning Shewolf,”
Vasko Popa (trans. by Charles Simic)
Upon my tongue lives a shewolf. She is my keeper. She is electrified mammoth, she is coy executioner, she is whiplash— when I attempt elocution— of her name: shewool—
To speak the name that cannot be tongued.
Her name tempts me.
She has taken part of my speech and stories— and she is {that pause} between murder and mercy. {How similar.} She brings herself and my tongue into being, into fitful togetherness. We dwell uneasily, she and {I}. Or rather: {i} keep her, but she is my keeper. She is my brazen— by keeping— herself —unsaid. By keeping me from— speaking— her name. She is always with me. When I spin out {of myself} to wrestle a demon, she immolates all the tenderness within us, whirls into ashes, fire, flesh. She does not pray when I pray at the lectern, outside a storefront church, on the crowded summer trains of this oppressive city that scraps metal from my mouth. I never mourn the faith lost in living and living in crowded cities. Because Shewolf never does. She is the opposite of my wanting wholeness. She is a turbulent mosaic of stone, metal and base elements that flit in and out of existence, creating and destroying one another, this. Shewolf. Word-Giver. Destroyer. I wasn’t born with her. She came to me between the days I spoke my first word and said my own name. Shewolf: still I try to say her name in the darkness, facing a mirror: this is how she hides the tongue from me.
When I’m wrestling a demon, the black leather of tefillin squeezing my arm and a freshly written qameot on my lips, Shewolf is there with me, she knocks, is knocking still, against my tongue. Be gone. {Be gone.} She won’t tell me if it’s the same demon we face again and again, or if all demons arise from silence or speech. Or the insidious and blessed space between. We square off at times, Shewolf and I, fighting for first-person dominance. She wins when I want to speak— her name. And then I am floating in and out of her existence. She is my keeper. Even when some♦time{s} she blazes through demonic diamonds in angelic eyes. Do I? She says. {Do I?} Do I. Dare. You. Shewolf is speaking now. Because the demon is still at large. Because it is a little less now. She will you-s and you-ed whoever, whatever, she attempts to. Raise down. Razes. Drags the dragons out. Of the demon. Again and again. She is. Persistence. Sets them ablaze. Sets them free. Makes them odd and last daylight that burns a single hole through each demonic diamond eye. Again and again. I look through them. Once human. Where a heart still beats after death of tongue, leg, body. My tongue. Cannot tame time nor understand this. But I am persistent.
On my lips: a new qameot.
On my tongue: Shewolf singing what I cannot speak.
*
Shewolf is not mine, but I am hers. And she holds on tightly. Once a cantor, who loved the way I read Hebrew prayers, tried to help me. He asked if it is was the “L” in the word “wolf” that I can’t pronounce, or the proximity of “ol” to “f.” He said to me: put a cork between your front teeth and speak. But Shewolf covets. Shewolf is cunning. Her body set the cork aflame. Wine ran from my young mouth. Wine that had turned, was bitter, with shame. I said: woo. Oof. I said: woa. Fffff. Shewolf is cunning. She knows there is a wolf hidden in my speech. She is that keeper. She cuts my tongue with her diamond-won eyes. A word rolls off my tongue: woah- fut. I am reduced. Defeated. I think of this late cantor who would’ve told me not to wrestle with demons. Even if they come for me. But I am brazen, I do not fear them because I lose myself to her bottom-teeth-biting-cold into the midnight hours. I lose myself. This very life. Is. The beautiful, faulty attempt in making candid and clear what you want to say the most, to speak something beloved into existence. Even when. You feel. It lives beyond, has no use, for names. Given. You’re staring at the mirror in the darkness again. A small fire. Burning oak tree between. Your teeth. Calling her name through vague shadow. Calling her neither demon nor heavenly seed. Nothing will die and nothing will grow out of her. She only burns. She. Wolf. Trespasses. By singing. A{new}. Colossal. Flame. Anew by the never. Singular. Keeping. She is for by way of being against. Teeth. Call her name. Call her. Call. Her. You. Your very life. Bound in killing cloth. Bound in leather wrapped around your arm. Next week, she will ask a little more of you, ask you to come closer to your own tongue. Now, give me yours. Give it to me.
Behind you, the silence of early Sabbath morning hides on the tongue of the hard, hard seconds-long silence of the city, your city. It cuts you on the bias with its burning streets. Steam rises up from cracks in molten concrete. It is your breath. You are ready. Behind you in diming darkness, the prelude to a poet wrestling with an unworldly being who once belonged somewhere here, perhaps this very city. But. You are ready. Your tongue is bound. She is the fire you take from your mouth. And. You. Your very life. Now. Now.