These are poems rejected by journals, in chronological order by response date from earliest to most recent—the diametrical opposite of my series Pub Crawl, which features poems published in journals in the same kind of chronological order. As with my other series, there are personal notes and craft notes. Roll your eyes as much as you like—that’s what Rejected! is all about!
To My Nephew Circumcised by the Obstetrician
Sliced and exposed to the dry, chafing air,
the infant lay helpless and mute,
nameless still,
the gesture of his ritual completion
uncompleted,
the covenantal sign forfeited in his flesh,
man's hand in God's creation,
a gesture cruel and painful,
bereft of meaning.
Nobody prayed for you,
powerless over your mutilation,
for the second time
in as many generations.
For you see, Jacob,
I too suffered this indignity—
to be cut with cold steel
but denied my paternal blessing.
Say shibboleth!
Tell them you are my sister:
A martyr, forever to bear the scar
of a mother's ignorance
and a father's contempt.
Jacob, you are the namesake of a man
who died with blue numbers on the back of his hand.
Rejection History
APR 03/13/95
Colorado Review 04/17/95
H_NGM_N 05/05/06
Diagram 07/14/06
AGNI 12/12/22
Current publication status: Not published in a journal, anthology, or book
Is this poem wonderful or awful? I really don’t know. I certainly think it’s one of the strangest poems I never published. And I gave up on it sooner than I did other poems—the previous poems featured in Rejected! were submitted to 8–10 journals; this poem was only submitted to five. So I think I figured out pretty quickly that this dog was not going to hunt. The version I submitted to AGNI just a year ago was shorter and, I thought, more palatable, but it still failed to land.
I think the scenario described in the poem is fairly clear. And it is indeed ripped from the headlines of the poet’s own life, albeit the name of the nephew has been changed. Jacob is actually my paternal grandfather’s name, and although I have no documentation to prove it, I assume he received a kosher circumcision on his eighth day of life at the hands of a qualified mohel. My nephew is named for his maternal grandfather, who was, in fact, as the poem indicates in the final couplet, a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps.
And as far as I know, all three of my brothers, all older than me, also received kosher circumcisions. I was the odd Broder boy out in everything having to do with Jewish ritual, as I had neither a bris nor a bar mitzvah. I was, also as the poem indicates, circumcised by the obstetrician who delivered me. When I was old enough to understand such things, my mother told me she could not afford to pay a mohel to perform my circumcision. We were indeed of very modest means when I was eight days old, but I don’t quite believe that there was no way to pull off a kosher bris for little Michael. I don’t know what else to say about it than that. I have nothing to go by other than what my mother told me, and she is long gone now.
As for the teaching that ritual circumcision of males in Jewish tradition represents the hand of man in God’s creation, I learned that during the nine weeks I was a student at Yeshiva Ohr Somayach in Jerusalem in early 1983. And when I say “man,” I mean man as in the male gender, not as a sexist and binarist term for humankind. The idea being that women, in their role as bearers of children, play a large, looming, quite apparent role in God’s creation; but men, not so much. So, the teaching goes, God gave male children this extra bit of skin around the head of their penis, specifically and expressly (davka, as one might say in Hebrew) so that the father could slice it off, thereby completing the creation of the son. I know, I know, this teaching gives short shrift to daughters. I didn’t elaborate the teaching, I’m just reporting it to explain a line in a poem.
For those not in the biblical know, the lines that may seem the most obscure are
Say shibboleth! Tell them you are my sister:
I am going to snag the explanation of “Say shibboleth” from Merriam-Webster.
The Bible's Book of Judges (12:4-6) tells the story of the Ephraimites, who, after they were routed by the Gileadite army, tried to retreat by sneaking across a ford of the Jordan River that was held by their enemy. The Gileadites, wary of the ploy, asked every soldier who tried to cross if he was an Ephraimite. When the soldier said “no,” he was asked to say shibboleth (which means “stream” in Hebrew). Gileadites pronounced the word "shibboleth," but Ephraimites said “sibboleth.” Anyone who didn't pronounce the initial sh was killed on the spot.
As for “Tell them you are my sister,” it refers to Genesis verses 10–13, which the New Living Translation renders as follows:
At that time a severe famine struck the land of Canaan, forcing Abram to go down to Egypt, where he lived as a foreigner. As he was approaching the border of Egypt, Abram said to his wife, Sarai, “Look, you are a very beautiful woman. When the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife. Let’s kill him; then we can have her!’ So please tell them you are my sister. Then they will spare my life and treat me well because of their interest in you.”
As for what those two biblical allusions are doing in the poem, I don’t think I should deprive each reader of the opportunity to decide that for themself. I will admit that, while I had something particular in mind regarding how those biblical phrases related to the context of the poem, I also just liked the idea of showing off my Judaic studies chops.
If you liked this post, please consider clicking the ❤️ below. I welcome your comments, too, on the poem itself, or any aspect of this post, or anything you would like to share about the writing or reading of poetry.
This one I love!
Good stuff!