Tekiah Gedolah

Wind through the ram’s horn. Bone-stench,
a blast from the varicose canal. Stillness
slants the swaying crowd – I await the lengthened
tone even once it spills into my ears:
the breath is sapped of air before it ever fills,
stretched and pale to be preserved, dead but not –
time is a leech that lets the note like blood,
a year milked out into the swollen abdomen of history,
its woolen pulse that ebbs from organs out to breath
and back, our corner of Toronto in a holding pattern
of sleek cars, finery, forgetting. Blithe assurance
that we are special. Wind through the horn.
The call, like a muscle wrenched beyond
its axis of return. Time is a leech.

*Tekiah gedolah is the long blast of the shofar that is sounded on the Jewish High Holidays

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Ben Meyerson holds an MFA from the University of Minnesota, and currently splits his time between Toronto, Canada and Granada, Spain. He is the author of three chapbooks: In a Past Life (The Alfred Gustav Press, 2016), Holcocene (Kelsay Books, 2018), and An Ecology of the Void (Above/Ground Press, 2019). His poems, translations and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in several journals, including Long Poem Magazine, Great River Review, The Inflectionist Review, Rust+Moth, and Pidgeonholes.