{revisions + additions}

(1) Zipporah tells Moses to scram

forget how you found us, how my six
sisters ran when the shepherds yelled
that we had no right to the water even if
our father’s flock staggered from the heat,
how they gathered around my shouting
as if thirsty themselves, how you stood
between us, how I hated loving you for that.

forget my father’s offer of me, the bread
at our wedding, how you promised that night
your roamings were over, how I watched
your hands go still on the blanket
and believed you. forget my feet
swelling and my belly swelling
and the nights in the field praying

for a boy, promising any god within earshot
everything. forget that when Gershom was a boy,
and so strong, we knew it was a god of the field
to thank and no blood covenant necessary, but you
went ahead with the cutting, at night, while I slept
exhausted with the birth.

forget how I swore no allegiance to the god
who sent you into the desert, so bone-hungry,
so sick with demands, how when Eliezer
was born I held him all night for weeks
until the time for you to bloody him had passed.

do you forget the lies? that you are
Egyptian by culture but by birth, a Jew?
how we hid that from my father, sure
we’d lose everything, and now this
volatile deity of yours fills this dusty
inn room with lightning, sets
the boys screaming, and I know

it is your blood or Eliezer’s and if only
for the minute you stood between me
and those thirsty men I take the flint knife
to our youngest, touch the skin
to your feet, watch the lightning cease,
surely you are a bridegroom of blood
to me, forget me now, follow that god
to heaven, hell or Egypt, I’m going home.

(2) Zipporah calls Moses home

find me, holy with the scent of mourning,
giving away grief like coins. come pliant
and hoping, truce a burning olive branch,
come that obvious and urgent. dusk pulls
across my shoulders, a derelict shawl –
find me here. unlatch the mouth so far shut
from me, loose the jubilee waiting there,
the promise. gather our sons
into your pockets. their chins
carried your defiance
all the way to Midian.

Moses, I am the burning bush. the plagues,
the pharoah’s throat, the Red Sea. I am where
you began before either of us lost our mothers,
before the reeds became our beds, before
your God invented himself.

when I broke you from me, I became the sand,
the staff, the brother who welcomed you
and no place is home now, the boys
will not sleep alone, they refuse to eat
unless facing the door, they are
your feet. they stand in the dust
waiting – we are your people.
set us free.

(3) life with Moses post-exodus

Zipporah means bird, and I do not fly. I stay
with this man, his god a stranger to me
whose call is stronger than mine, stronger
than the boys who drag at his calves
every time he leaves, no matter what
he promises, how quickly he says he’ll return.

Zipporah means bird and I am brown
as wet sand, a brown bird that does not sing
or fly, but nests in a father’s house
gathering stones and cloth and watches
the windows, sure every movement,
every bird is him returning.

Zipporah means bird and I am no bird,
this name an accident of birth; orphans
have no names, those who found me
in the reeds called me this, how
could they know, a Cushite girl
so brown, they should have returned me.

Zipporah means bird and I would give
all I have and have known to be back
on the river, nameless and thrashing,
someday I’ll weave reeds into three
caskets cursing his god and my mother
and take us into the water to await his return.

*