Guest Author

Melissa Studdard - Writer, Poet, Professor, Editor and Talk Show Host

Tithing
for Hildegard of Bingen

                

                In my dreams I speak the language of your visions,

                lingua ignota of the milky sky. This earth was born

 

                to nurture us, the clouds to quench, the trees

                and flowers to bloom your alphabet: Scivias,

 

                Liber vitae meritorum, De operatione Dei –

                bursts of fuchsia light, petals of divinity

 

                unfolding in your eye, like the open arms of God

                ushering in the healing waters of the Rhine.

 

                You held the chalice high, took your sips

                from every inch of the rim, and, like a mama bird,

 

                fed them back to us, pre-digested, lit

                from within the golden beak of your illumination,

 

                glowing inside the ruby lungs of your canticles.

                In the dreams I am your Jutta, your Volmar,

 

                your confessor, your scribe, and you are a tithe

                to the world from our cloistered realm;

 

                you are a tithe to God from our bankrupt world;

                you are the ten per cent that earns our human keep.

 

 

 

 






Melissa Studdard - Copyright 2011

Om

         

          He sent us flowers without a card,

          God did—that trickster soul.

          It must have been a sound that started it all,

          And he’s still out there somewhere, laughing

          While we seek directions, or direction,

          While we, the addressees, search for an addresser,

          While we sort and sift and categorize and collect,

          Divide, classify and analyze. Our refrigerators hum to us,

          And heaven knows the bugs make their merry at night.

          Once I even saw the color yellow hum

          When I imagined van Gogh stroking its thick,

          Vibrant passion onto the page.

          That yellow song was anything but hum-drum.

           I swear, I felt it on the roof of my mouth

           And at the back of my throat

           Like a yogic ritual or some sort of Tantric stunt.

           Even deep in my chest, yes, I felt the hum.

           And in the other room—the clothes in the washer,

           Round and around they went, their own spinning universe,

           And next to them, a parallel world, the dryer,

           Connected to the same outlet,

           Hum, hum, humming away.

           This life is anything but ho-hum,

           With all this motion and noise.

           Hell, I can hardly even hear over the hum of my phone,

           Which I have cursed for interference,

           Which I have indignantly labeled, “that silver piece of shit,”

           Which I have threatened to replace (like it cares),

           And which was really Om all along.

           Washing clothes, I’ve since learned, is an act of prayer. 





Melissa Studdard - Copyright 2011 - First published in Tiferet, then re-run in Red Fez, and forthcoming in the Hip Poetry anthology.
Melissa Stud­dard's books include the best­selling novel Six Weeks to Yehi­dah, its companion jounal, My Yehidah, and the interview collection The Tiferet Talk Interviews. Since its August 2011 release, Six Weeks to Yehidah has been the recipient of many accolades, including the Forward National Literature Award,  the Pinnacle Book Achievement Award and January Magazine's best children's books. It was also named a finalist for the National Indie Excellence Awards and the Readers Favorite Awards. As well, her poetry, fiction, essays, reviews, and arti­cles have appeared in numer­ous magazines, jour­nals, and antholo­gies. Melissa cur­rently serves as a Reviewer-at-Large for The National Poetry Review, an editorial advisor for The Criterion, and an edi­tor for Tiferet Journal, where she hosts the journal's radio interview program, Tiferet Talk. Melissa received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and is a professor for the Lone Star College System and a teaching artist for The Rooster Moans Poetry Cooperative.

www.melissastuddard.com

Author of Six Weeks to Yehidah and My Yehidah
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