Issue 32: Joanne Limburg

five poems from the sequence ALAS

Aliens 3

א.  An immigrant shall be considered

ב.   Likely to become a charge on the rates

ג.   As neighbours they are unpleasant

ד.   Salesmen with stentorian voices

ה.  Accustomed to

ו.    Live in different conditions

ז.    Among

ח.  Sad loyalists of religion

ט.   Among the

י.     Leaders of the Jews

יא. And outlandish

יב.  Social

יג.  Administration

יד.  Life

טו.  A matter of birth and heritage

טז.  Something showy

יז.   A disputed point

יח.  Labour

יט.  And the foul but thriving poverty

כ.    Street after street                  

כא. Aggravate the             Local

כב. Atmosphere                    Seeking admission.

Sources:

Charles Booth, On the City: Physical Pattern and Social Structure. Selected writings

William Evans-Gordon, speech in the House of Commons (2nd May 1905)

Aliens Act (1905)

Hansard, House of Lords debate, Aliens Bill, https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/1905-08-03/debates/56b2b651-6338-4927-a228-45ed626e7740/AliensBill

Babylon 1

א.   Babylons may arise when a 

ב.   Rift

ג.   Opens up in anyone’s

ד.   Kin’s story. Their preferred soil is

ה.  Exile, the site of a

ו.    Neighbour turning on neighbour,

ז.    Broken bonds and the bitterest bondage. To

ח.  Live where Babylons

ט.  Arise, is to

י.    Sit, in

יא. Tears, on the

יב.  Banks of strange

יג.   Rivers, stripped of all you

יד.  Owned, all you

טו.  Knew – or thought you knew -

טז.  Emptied of its sense.

יז.   Nothing is left to you here

יח.  But

יט.  Lamentations.

כ.    All the other

כא. Songs have been reserved for other

כב. Tongues.

Source

Acrostic: ‘Broken Blast’, Mishna Sukkah 5:4, Sefirah app

Crusade 3

א.     Children

ב.     Of

ג.      Misfortune, I know not what

ד.     Force

ה.    Of the night

ו.      Rose

ז.      That

ח.    Under compulsion

ט.    So many

י.      In

יא.   Number

יב.   On this holy journey to Jerusalem

יג.    Under the yolk of the Catholic faith

יד.    Resisted

טו.   Mercy.  

טז.   Only

יז.     Uncircumcised

יח.   Rest,

יט.   Not to be doubted

כ.     In hope of safety.

כא.  Not long after this,

כב.  Great fear entered.

Sources

Acrostic: ‘Comfort us in our mourning’, ‘The Chronicles of Solomon bar Simson’, pp15-73 in Eidelberg, Shlomo The Jews and the Crusaders: The Hebrew Chronicles of the First and Second Crusades, (Madison, U Wisconsin Press, 1977)

Albert of Aix and Ekkehard of Aura: ‘Emico and the Slaughter of the Rhineland Jews’, Internet History Sourcebooks: Medieval Sourcebook (fordham.edu)

Dybbuks 2

א.  Dear Foremothers,

ב.  Aunties of the

ג.   Unquiet, please stop muttering in my

ד.  Genome.  I can’t

ה.  Hear what it’s

ו.   Trying to

ז.   Express. I went to

ח.  Read my future,

ט.  Only to

י.    Find your past 

יא. Inscribed, all those

יב. Spasmodic

יג.  Reductions of

יד.  Ashkenazi stock, clear as

טו.  Extinction events on

טז.  Limestone. I’m a

יז.   Living fossil

יח.  Apparently,

יט.  My mammograms are

כ.    Evidence for palaeontologists, my

כא. Now is your

כב. Then. And now it’s me muttering.

Source

Acrostic:  Judges 11:40 Sefaria.org

that the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in a year.

Ekhah 4

א.  Elijah

ב.  Never came at Pesach, so we’d say  

ג.   Dayenu, and stay in

ד.   London for another year. Technically, it was

ה.  Exile, but exile in the

ו.    Suburbs, where the

ז.    Schools are good. We were and we are 

ח.  British. We are

ט.  Ordinary subjects; we pray

י.    Discreetly, we don’t impose our lunisolar

יא. Year on

יב.  English calendars, so we are

יג.   Nice to have next-

יד.   Door, if sometimes

טו.  Loud; then you say you are

טז.  Embarrassed for us. But we prefer to register our

יז.    Shames in-house. We fear we won’t

יח.  Survive disgrace.

יט.  Believe us, we

כ.    Own our faults and in great detail. We

כא. Do not think we are better than

כב. You. God knows we are not.

Joanne Limburg’s first collection, Femenismo, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2000. Since then, there have been two more: Paraphernalia in 2007 and The Autistic Alice in 2017. She has also published a collection for children, Bookside Down, with Salt Publishing, and several prose books with Atlantic Books, the most recent of which was the linked essay collection, Letters to my Weird Sisters: On Autism and Feminism. Joanne teaches Creative Writing at the Cambridge Insitute of Further Education and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

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