Right at this moment I'm totally cool

In honor of April Fool's Day, a poem; even if a reprint. "Tzaddik" was originally published in Mythic Delirium #11 and can be found in Postcards from the Province of Hyphens. It seemed as appropriate as anything.

Tzaddik

Snapshot of the wonder-worker: it rained
soup and caught him outside, fork still
in one hopeful hand and knaidlach bouncing
like hailstones softly all around, proverb

turned as indisputable as a curl of onion
picked from behind one ear; he wrestles
with no angels but the talent of laughing
precisely at every worst moment. Spirits

do not attend on his studies, each page
like a leaf on the Tree of Life; Elijah's
cup never brimmed with ocean, lost riches
salvaged from a salt wave of wine, not

at his table; he never trips but he falls
laughing with the brilliant, backward
spite of his miracles, the sun that blazes
nightlong in honor of his new profession,

selling lamps: by threatening to take up
undertaking, he can frighten off even
the Angel of Death. Thirty-five more
like him and the world would blow out,

a candle that somebody sneezed on: one
still center of absurdity on which all
the solemn universe revolves, physics
and prayer and the infinite repetition

of the lightning-stricken umbrella
that he shakes out, still smoking,
and raises again to keep off the rain
of herring—this time, he had a spoon.

Please to come down and pull back the lock

My poem "The Windfalls" is now online at Lone Star Stories. With a shadow puppet.