29 Sep Isaiah at Rest by Philip Terman
who I imagine to be ordinary,
in love with a woman who like you
grows and then cooks the vegetables
and only cares about a happy life.
Ye shall be confounded for the gardens
that ye have chosen doesn’t apply to her,
he meant it in a more rhetorical way.
And when he arrives home late, his voice
gone, his throat aching, feet scarred
and scratched from all the hard roads,
she puts in front of him a bowl
of last season’s harvest: potatoes, tomatoes,
carrots, onions, basil, fennel, dill.
It tastes in his mouth not as the tongue
of fire devours the stubble
or as the dry grasses sinketh down in the flame
but more flavorful of their earth
than the live coals that touched his lips
and took away his iniquities. He loosens
the girdle of righteousness from his waist,
and takes off completely the girdle
of faithfulness from his loins,
being in any case more full
of the knowledge of his sources.
All flesh is grass, he whispers
into her ear, and the smell
of his fiery breath
makes her asks him to whisper it
again.
About the Poet
Philip Terman received a B.A. and M.A. from Ohio University and a PhD. from Ohio State University. His books of poetry include My Blossoming Everything (Saddle Road Press, 2024), The Whole Mishpocha: New and Selected Jewish Poems (1998-2023), Our Portion: New and Selected Poems (Autumn House, 2015), The Torah Garden (Autumn House, 2011), and Rabbis of the Air (Autumn House, 2007). He is the co-translator of Tango Beneath a Narrow Ceiling: The Selected Poems of Riad Saleh Hussein (Bitter Oleander, 2021).
His poems and essays have appeared in many journals and including Poetry Magazine, The Kenyon Review, Tikkun, The Georgia Review and Poetry International. He has also appeared in several anthologies including The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, 101 Poets for the Next Millennium, Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust, Joyful Noise: An Anthology of Spiritual Literature, and Extraordinary Rendition: American Writers on Palestine. Retired from Clarion University, he served as co-director of the Chautauqua Writers Festival for 14 years.
Currently, he directs The Bridge Literary Arts Center in Venango County, PA and is co-curator of the Jewish Poetry Reading Series, sponsored by the Jewish Community Center of Buffalo. Recipient of the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award for Poems on the Jewish Experience, Terman conducts poetry workshops and coaches writing in various communities. He has collaborated with composers, visual artists, and he performs his poetry with the jazz band Catro.
Related Event
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- The Literary Café Series at the CFI will feature poet Philip Terman, along with fellow Saddle Road Press published poets Trudy Stern, Jennifer Campbell, Terez Peipins, and Ryki Zuckerman reading from their work on Tuesday, Oct.1st, at 7:30 p.m. at The Center for Inquiry, 1310 Sweet Home Rd. in Amherst, NY. The event is free and open to the public.
The Poem of the Week feature is curated by literary legacy awardee R.D. Pohl.