Poetry by Rachel Neve-Midbar

Andrew Hart CC




Semi-
               colon

What is a period? In one story 
the girl is twelve. Alone. In the midst 

of a mid-century Jewish dilema. Her 
father having died ankle deep in shit and 

proud of the bullet that ripped through 
his head, never having had to know 

that his body fell into the sludge. 
Her mother lost out of money 

arrested and forced to labor. And she? 
Our girl? In a barn, unknowing, alone 

and afraid; stuffing straw and the loose 
hem of her skirt into her underwear 

to stem the flow. Where were the angels 
then? The reconstituted blood of the son 

of man? Then there was the other girl:
solemn and too tall. When she confessed

the blood her mother slapped her hard;
told her to clean herself up. In another 

story the girl is really a boy or really
a girl who has taught herself to pee 

standing up. Creating an arc of loveliness 
or even sometimes, if the light was right 

a rainbow; oh the freedom of it! The freedom.
I wonder how she held her lips open

to a waning sun? And who was there to see? 
Oh those girls and the freedoms they never 

really had; will have. Hadn’t there just been 
enough when she bound her breasts; bled in-

to her breeches; broke her covenant 
with some god or herself or what is a period 

anyway? Wouldn’t we women just be
better off with some semi-colons?

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Poet, translator, essayist and Fulbright scholar, Rachel Neve-Midbar’s collection Salaam of Birds (Tebot Bach 2020) was chosen by Dorothy Barresi for the Patricia Bibby First Book Prize. She is also the editor of the anthology Stained: creative writing about menstruation (Querencia Press 2023) and her scholarly work Thought and New Language in the Menstrual Poem is forthcoming from Palgrave MacMillan. Rachel’s work has appeared widely in journals and anthologies. She is also the editor of Calul Journal: a weekly offering of poetry and art. More at rachelnevemidbar.com



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