What Sons Receive: A Collection of Poems

Yael Unterman

What Sons Receive
What sons receive from their fathers:
A sharp chin, a flat nose,
a knowledge of the wind,
a good mind, the skill to find or
lose, a leaning towards drink,
the ability to think or forget,
an arrogant heart, sips
from grandfather’s brew,
a million gold coins,
a carved flute,

or

tongue lashings, beatings
from a belt, the violence and silence
that soils daily the masculinity
of a half-grown man, stains his
humanity.

I received a coat
given in exchange for my innocent laughter.
Soon after, they claimed I came to gloat,
switch my blood with that of a goat,
and I became a beast, penned
up in pits and prisons,
mumbling to myself by rote:
“I am Joseph, son of Jacob, Isaac, Abraham,”
Holding to the memory of my father’s hand
as he, so loving and proud,
wrapped me in the coat
that became my shroud.

Indeed I died and was reborn
as the man of God, a deep burden of joy.
Yet, sometimes recalling that naïve young boy,
I fall on the ground
and weep. I mourn.

Joseph’s Pendulum
Swinging at breakneck speed
from high to low,
goodbye–hi–farewell–hello,
up and down in a dizzying vertigo
of success and spurning,
soft bed, hard flooring,
completely unmooring,
bouncing back, returning,

and always, like a brain fog, the yearning, the yearning
for cruel people who have long forgotten
and surely do not remember me,

but I remember,
I well remember,
in my heart still burns an ember.

Binyamin
It’s utterly infuriating,
  I who am ravenous for life
   am wrapped in cotton wool.
My brothers always mediating
    between me and all kinds of strife,
       preventing my living to the full.
So I sit here, stagnating,
   while twisting inside me, a knife;
       a slavering yellow-eyed wolf
lies impatiently waiting
   with heart ripe and rife
     to spring, and seize my rule!

Reuven

I didn’t ask to be born first,
born of the thirst of my mother
to have a son – not sufficing with one
she did not tarry, had Shimon and Levi,
as if children are little cakes that
you bake, sweet and heavy.

It’s an odd home we live in,
there are disconnects; there’s
bartering plants for sex; intrigues, jealousy;
my brothers violently vying for
my father’s legacy,
willing to commit a felony
to undermine the coat-wearer’s supremacy.

And in the middle of this turbulence, 
in the storm’s eye,
I try to be good, to get by.
But sometimes, when no one’s
looking, I curl up, confused,
and just cry.