About this book
Talmud is busy telling me how to make a wine sack
out of a beaver’s stomach lining. Out the window
the redwood’s gone. It’s started to rain, maybe Adderall
in the drops, ocean is calmed down.
“Often heart-stopping, these poems abound in images uniquely unfamiliar. Not intended for the casual reader, they capture the violation of nature, free speech silenced, humanity flattened, families – and friends – failing as they often do. Yet above all, the poems are profoundly nourishing. How can that be? In part because of the poet’s delicious humor, even more so that rare thing, her purity of soul, and above all, because she tells the truth.”
—Merle Feld, author of Longing, Poems for a Life
About the Author
Genevieve Greinetz is a San Francisco based rabbi and poet. Her pieces have been published in NELLE, Honey Literary, and NomadartX, among other journals. Animals Are Shouting Down From the Sky is her first full length collection.
Advance Praise
“Often heart-stopping, these poems abound in images uniquely unfamiliar. Not intended for the casual reader, they capture the violation of nature, free speech silenced, humanity flattened, families – and friends – failing as they often do. Yet above all, the poems are profoundly nourishing. How can that be? In part because of the poet’s delicious humor, even more so that rare thing, her purity of soul, and above all, because she tells the truth.”
—Merle Feld, author of Longing, Poems for a Life
“The poems in this collection begin in the middle of a thought. The effect that this has is one of deep urgency, like seeing a shooting star in the middle of the Northern Lights. There is that much color and surprise in these poems. Greinetz is a new poet with an old voice or a new voice with an old soul or a voice that has been here for a very long time so that when you hear her words, read them, you think: I didn’t know these poems existed but I have always known they were here, with me, in my body, for as long as there has been time. Such is the force of Greinetz’s poetry. They are the body and the earth. They explore Judaism, the female body, love, and the ocean. That is to say, everything that is from above and everything that is here on the planet, of the earth. This book is about us, the human animal, not paying enough attention to our humanity even when we are reminded by the creatures from the sky shouting at us to pay attention. The poet writes ‘Birds are saying, Earth you’ve got to stop this/love and support for your bad boy human, it’s killing you.’ Greinetz’s poetry is one of constant surprise, deep imagery and sonic explosions so we can look up and notice ourselves in the eyes of those animals and take care of one another like we are supposed to, urgently, with music.”
—Matthew Lippman, author of We Are All Sleeping With Our Sneakers On
“In a voice disarmingly frank, magnificently bold, always irreverent (some might say blasphemous) we’re compelled to inhabit psychic and existential spaces that feel both wildly dangerous and exceedingly necessary. The poems wake us up to what is, and what is not—destroying useless categories in the project of letting us feel with tender, broken hearts, and see more clearly through human, half-blind eyes.”
—Anne Germanacos, author of Tribute
"I said"
You know you could get killed
for saying that– i know people
who would burn your house
up for saying that and i do. We’d been
on the couch, i had to go and left reading
Bukowski knowing i could die
for reading poems like that in San Francisco on the train
where anyone could peer over my shoulder and slit a vein of me
for reading the wrong letter in the wrong way. I’m saying it was tense
on the couch, tense on the train, tense in my office
where i spend the afternoons hearing about hostages
being woven into tunnels they could get killed
for being home. I could get killed
for saying home in a line like this at a time like this in a war
that’s over there but i could get killed for a war
like this its threats swivel in my mom’s mind she calls me
on my way to work afraid i could die in there today like i’m special
agent, undercover secret op status when really i’m standing around
face to the screen, hands on keys emailing grievances and studying
Aramaic and i could get killed
for drinking tea out of a thermos in my office
at the synagogue i could die
standing here, could get killed for verses
like these. Could die for crying at the wrong time over the wrong
person on the wrong couch with the wrong guy–
i could get killed for driving home. My neighbor died
for being a person, I could die
from that, you could get killed for having a thought
like that i know someone who got shot
for saying the wrong thing at the wrong grocery store
to the wrong person trying to buy some ice cream–
you can die for that now, can get killed
for purchasing the wrong flavor.
"Opinionated Sky"
What I’m trying to say is Beta Pictoris
got bigger than Polaris. It’s like no one
cares about the North Star since NASA
posts all these alluring things like supermassive
black holes & winking galaxies 63 light years
away & i’m trying to say i miss that place
where we used to point and think alright
that’s the ethic of the world, and ok
there’s the leader, but now it’s spiral galaxies
& choose your own principles, moralities— I swear that North
Star used to live in the Pentagon, i’d seen it
swirling on ceilings & in classes
on wisdom texts, but supernovas, the universe
expanding & artificial aliens—it only rains
here seven coves south of Ocean Beach, so far
from city light & still i see nothing up there
on Wednesday night just wind and all America
riffing in an opinionated sky. There’s no where
to point to and everyone’s pointing. I used to follow
those two blazers in Orion’s Belt a little diagonal
& up & there was the guide
light beacon Polaris & all its fables with endings
& beginnings & people i trusted & it’s the most
divided world the sky’s ever seen. Even stars
won’t blink back anymore so many other options.
"Animals Are Shouting Down From the Sky"
Bad with names, bad with dates like mind collapsed
into god time, jewish god time which is past
present future time you can’t say kind of
time. It’s today and my office is surrounded by armed guards
regular Friday turned up since bomb threats stand at the bimah
and speak our service back to the rivers, it’s shabbat
can i say that? I’m jewish, you ok with me using
that word? It’s offensive everything is offensive and the offense
is tripping over the lines and defense is failing and words
float off like clouds, like pillars of clouds that lead us all day
through deserts and places with no gravity the heaviness
only sinks us back to earth at night when we sleep and fly
into Chagall’s bible mind here on the earth. Can i say that? Earth
or maybe too political. Chagall, too Jewish, me
a rabbi, you believe me, you offended? We’re reading the beginning
of the Torah and the security guards are creating worlds
in their walkie talkies. The static between their comments
sits between lines of Torah a 13-year-old is chanting. In the words
god is creating light and god is seeing that the light is good and the animals
are shouting down from the sky and the fishes are welling
up from the womb of earth can i say that, womb? We
ok? I’m bleeding. When the moon was created i bled, i bleed
with it, you cool with that? People are bleeding
everywhere. We get to the second chapter
one of the guards walks out. Tension kicks its magic
in the air and no one is listening but the teen
is saying that Eve birthed Cain, then Abel
then Cain killed Abel and then Abel’s blood
cries to god from the earth. The stream of it
shrieks since blood wasn’t created to be spilled
but to flow and then maybe one day quench
the thirst of some other creature deep inside the planet.
Abel is bleeding in the book and god
is mourning, no one else is, just god
sobbing inside wind and into the trees. God is shaking
grief in the pines and sap and fruits are falling
Cain just stands there
after jumping off the edge of the story
and going to a place away from the words
that had been fathomed. He just stands there
after killing somebody, killing his brother
when no one even knew how to cry about something
like that. How could you know how to cry
about something like that
if you’d never cried. God knew. And the security guard is back
and things seem fine and the Torah’s getting put away
and our phones
are all off and we don’t want to turn them on
since now we know how to cry and we can hear blood
screaming from the earth and god is somewhere
off the page of the story and we don’t want to get the news just want to sit
in the blurry place after Abel’s death and drink up
a little bit of safety while the static
of the walkie talkie chants its number.
