Jewish Poetry Project

A dark fairy tale told in poems

By: Shawn C Harris

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Paperback | 5 September 2022

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Paperback
86 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
21.59 x 13.97 x 0.53

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The story starts at a Jewish funeral.

fist after fist fills with cool damp earth

It travels to Israel:

at ben-gurion airport

here she comes hauling her baggage

rendered clumsy by her burden

beneath that smooth brown skin

that halo of thick coarse hair

the plantation and the shtetl

live in blood and memory

her passport names her

tirzah persephone horowitz

after an aunt on her dad's side

who died so young in the camps

and her mother's favorite greek myth

but to call her tirzah is too much

like uncovering her nakedness

like speaking aloud the holy name

and the holy city of Tzfat...

i am a city of song

plucked strings of a lyre

loud brassy klezmer

throbbing techno beats

shoes clop-clopping on cobblestone

tires screeching on the asphalt river

winding round my peak

It features monsters...

terry loves monsters

loved them since her first pimples and pubes

sneaking dracula under the covers

wondering what it would be like

to feel a vampire's fangs on her neck

to taste human blood in her mouth

to transform into wolf or bat or mist

but dracula always dies

staked and beheaded by good christian men

because magic and mystery must not survive

And it ends...

No. That would be telling.

Industry Reviews

"The Red Door is a finely observed, uniquely voiced collection that maps the dangerous terrain between brokenness and rebirth, which is dripping with blood, lit by prayer, and redolent with mystery."

-Gwydion Suilebhan, author of Cracked and Abstract Nude

"The Red Door, like its poet author Shawn C. Harris, transcends genres and identities. It is an exploration in crossing worlds. It brings together poetry and story telling, imagery and life events, spirit and body, the real and the fantastic, Jewish past and Jewish present, to spin one tale."

-Einat Wilf, author of My Israel, Our Generation and Telling Our Story

"The Red Door is the slit of light between two darknesses, not merely sampling Biblical verses and liturgical choruses (though it does that, too: "we are but dust and ashes v'imru amen") but adding new installments to the stories of antiquity. A sinister narrative is posed behind a lush canopy of poems, meshing the Jerusalem of Temple times with the Jerusalem of today with the uncertain prophecies that bounce around the backs of our heads as each of us wonders, am I the only one who hears this? No, Harris's poems whisper back. No, you are not."

-Matthue Roth, author of Never Mind the Goldbergs and My First Kafka

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