Josephine, by Lewis Braham

The Treachery of Images, by Rene Magritte (Belgium) 1929

Josephine 

This is not a pipe. 
Strunk & White ain’t right about nuthin’.
Tell, not show--
My people of the book, of the birdsong,
Not the image graven on the silver scream.
You want a fetish
But my Rose is not a rose. She’s my sister
Or the color of your glasses 
When you think these matter
Or the acronym for Renal Oncology Service Enterprises
(Where my brother went).
This is not a pipe. 
It is not two orange butterflies—Dryas Heliconian—tangoing in the breeze on Nine Mile Run, the sun scorching their beaten wings
But my words, the pages in flames.
Our torah burning 
The Words say: “I am big.
It’s the speakers who got small.
We’re not an image,
but ‘Mama.’ ‘Dada.’”
My hands reaching for the unseen, 
Digits I don’t even know yet but strange lumpy beings.
And so begins, Josephine:
“The sun through dappled leaves, yellow on green.
What words the eyes speak between,”
Yet you say no, no, no, no, no!
Nothing but things
And I say no, nononono
I am
Not mere taxonomy.
You can’t just “write me off” with your zeroes and ones 
In your virtual ledger of pretty things.
I am the still small voice that sings, 
Josephine. 
There is no like. 
A wasp’s nest is not like a grey shrunken head with wisps of dank hair on its skull, its mouth shriveled to a terrible tiny O—note that letter O--where the bugs crawl out. 
It is not hanging from a branch over us like an innocent man who wants revenge on the absence of language. 
I am Aleph with my arms raised in victory or despair. 
I am Bet—not on the ponies—but closed on three sides
The first letter of the Pentateuch, the house of creation.  
I am my brother metastasized, blind to your world of things, gasping “Why mommy?” as he flatlined,
Not the squirrel whirling a nut in its furtive paws, 
Or the deer on Tranquility Trail munching grassy-mouthfuls with that slow slanted chew of ruminants. 
Jo-el- Josephine.
If your heart listens you can hear: 
I am not a thing.
I am the still small voice that sings.
I am the still small voice that sings.
iamthestillsmallvoicethatsings.

Lewis Braham

"The inspirations for this poem are Rene Magritte's The Treachery of Images, Kafka's "Josephine the Singer," Kings 19:12 and the death of my brother Joel."

​Lewis Braham's writing has appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Barron’s, Tuck, the Wall Street Journal, Reuter’s, Bloomberg and BusinessWeek.
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