Alicia Jo Rabins
How to Sail
Scrape the curse off the parchment. Stir the broken letters into a jar of water. Make a woman drink it: thus said Elohim. But why: thus said Molly, twelve years old. Now I was the teacher. We sat there, two black flames in a room of white fire. We were sailing on a wind that passed through the open window of a room next to the marketplace, two thousand years ago.
Long Division
Long
division
left me
alone
and in
pain.
Nobody
to take me
to the ER
or tell me
it will be
OK.
Don’t
let
this
hap-
pen
to
you.
Alicia Jo Rabins is a poet, musician and performer based in Portland, Oregon. Her work appears in American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, 6×6, Boston Review, and anthologies from NYU Press and Knopf; residencies and fellowships include Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and the Six Points Fellowship. She holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College and tours internationally with her band, Girls in Trouble, an art-pop song cycle about the women of Torah.