Poetry Thursday LILITHS NEW CAREER By Enid Dame No other she-demon has ever achieved as fantastic a career as Lilith. Raphel Patai THE HEBREW GODDESS In the last years of the century, Lilith became Director of Freshman Composition at an engineering college. This career advance surprised her. Her talents didnt fit the job description. She never dreamed theyd take her. This story is the same in many cultures: in Gilgamesh Sumer in Kabbalistic Poland. The girl always starts out at the bottom a lowly female demon always on the night shift always ends up somehow at the top of something, for an eyeblink before they find her out. It was more exciting in the old days when she got to sleep with God. Now she learns computer terminology chooses textbooks hires tutors makes coffee for the whole department. Her computer keeps feeding her messages. An image trembles on the screen then disappears. Where did it go? Nobody here can tell her. Its a miracle! The techies treat it casually as shed once treated Adam or her own history. She makes her inner office into a sort of garden not unlike the one shed left: ferns swirl steamily in radiator heat, primroses change color, Wandering Jew shoots off toward the ceiling, Swedish ivy hunkers down among his roots. She brings in yardsale lamps with maps around their bases. Lights are soft brown moons here cats eyes stare from wallboard. Her owls drop feathers on industrial gray carpet. She could take off her clothes here. But she never does. Once she spilled coffee down computers innards. It typed a message for her backward, on the monitor: MESSIAHS GOTTEN STUCK IN TRAFFIC. THIS PINHEADS GETTING CROWDED. THE ANGELS ARENT DANCING. Her students are mostly earnest boys from other countries. They want to make it in America. They know computer language. But private stories scare them. Especially their own. They come to office hours to protest their grades. She fidgets with her hair (cut short now, but still red), tries to seduce them into writing poetry.
Posted on: Thu, 30 Oct 2014 22:46:39 +0000
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