Jessica Ramer
The Last Prophet
To Israel Shahak, of blessed memory—chemist, human rights activist, and Holocaust survivor
When I was a girl, I watched a man—
the ersatz father—as he watched
prison movies: unfortunate women
were stripped of their clothing,
shorn of their hair as he watched,
his voice vibrating with a choking, sexual joy.
But when you came to me, they came to me,
characters, a whole cast of them, women
brought forth by you, clamoring to be heard,
who spoke what I dared not speak myself.
The Mathematician
The more one learns, the happier he becomes.
Not happy, but happier.
In the realm of nothingness,
numbers reign, an anodyne;
in their austere beauty,
eternal truth
revealed in a two-line proof.
It’s easy. See.
The Mystic
I don’t know if God exists, but if he does, it is my duty to oppose him on human rights grounds.
Years I looked for you without knowing you—
among wary-eyed guest workers in Berlin,
indigenas in Guatemala, blank-faced as soldiers
rifles at ready, ordered them off the bus.
When I found you, in a chain restaurant
outside New Britain, tenuous enlightenment
unraveled into soft, dark clots and I stood mute.
The gifts I had brought you seemed intrusive
as a catheter, trivial as a laundry list.
Instead, I gave you the gift of silence.
You gave me a voice, this two-edged thing held close.
Jessica Ramer is a third-year PhD student in poetry at the University of Southern Mississippi.
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