Judith Hall is the author of five poetry collections, including To Put The Mouth To, selected for the National Poetry Series by Richard Howard; Three Trios , her translations of the imaginary poet JII; and, most recently, Prospects. She also collaborated with David Lehman on Poetry Forum, which she illustrated.
She directed the PEN Syndicated Fiction Project and was senior program specialist for literary publishing at the National Endowment for the Arts. Since 1995, she has served as poetry editor of Antioch Review , and her poems have appeared in The Atlantic , American Poetry Review , The New Republic , The Paris Review, Poetry, The Progressive , and other journals, and in the Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthology series.
She taught at UCLA and the Art Center College of Design and, for many years, at the California Institute of Technology, after moving to New York, she taught at the Columbia University Graduate School of the Arts. Hall received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim and Ingram Merrill Foundations.
THE CHEER REGAINED
Judith Hall
A fair amount was left to us on the hill,
So long as we accepted sacrifice:
The small goat eyes of the virgin, the boy,
The boy, no longer one of us, the one
They led along multitudes, and master flutes
Lifted to the sky. And the shouts We added added us to sacrifice,
Now his belly slits, now
Thrown on the swept-together shaved evergreens.
And we shouted in the whirling ash for healing,
As if healing were “heaven enough”
When we held each other up, dancing
With the fire up the next gold hill.
The little kick I learned in lemon crocuses.
We danced more human, or so we assumed,
Because the old habits overvalued
What comes in to fill the absences,
The sleeping sunlight where the family passes on.
The losses, the nectar there: Blood, taken up,
Is passed to us with such serenity.
“Serenity!” But it was because we broke him
Between us like bread. Because
“More human” was a healing-being-woundedness,
Not human enough, not a gladness fleshed.
The faun gazing on wine leaps away from us.
We were running now for the last hill,
The rumpled gold mess we called a bed.
And will I raise the wet walls whitewashed over us,
And the long red beams?
Will he keep the door open
As the flowers open which is not long?
This will be the wonder of experience:
What we found was more than we were left on the hill.
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IN AN EMPTY GARDEN
Judith Hall
Better to fall, better to fall than wait
To be held in air; wanting to be held,
Held in words we use when we embrace.
I wanted to be held in air or fall,
To be held in air. Wanting to be held,
I fell along the air’s slow drawl,
Wanting to be held in air or fall,
As the turning, of a body turned a voice away.
I fell along the air’s slow drawl,
Away from words abundance, blame,
As he turned his body, turned his voice away,
As if I shed the words and gave them shape.
The word abundance, the word blame:
I handed him a place to put his tongue
And shed the words and gave them shape:
A snake, turning his skin into a skeleton.
I handed him a place to put his tongue,
A place where we knew why we kissed.
Like a snake, turning his skin into a skeleton,
I turned the air to kisses, golden nipples,
Any place. I knew why we kissed.
Another apple, another, another tongue.
The air will turn to kisses, golden nipples.
He wanted me to say I did it: Touched
Another apple, another, another tongue.
I will not tell you what we whispered.
He wanted me to say I did it, touched
A history of wishes to be held.
I will not tell you what we whispered.
I wanted him to help me question
A history of wishes: to be held,
Waiting, again, for that first kiss.
Help me. Help me question
The words we use when we embrace,
Waiting again for that first kiss—
Better to fall, better to fall than wait.”
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WORSHIP OF VENUS
Judith Hall
after Titan
Naked boys
Swarm, for acres, warm across the ancient field.
Some are drowsy by the cut pine. The others play,
Picked clean, whirling as they wave to her.
Why wait for them to hurt themselves? Let the winged ones
Scream in her pollinated air. She made them all,
Made them male
And small, and she
Will keep them small. Kisses this refrain. Her nipples
Harden, nudge the slightest gown damp with milk.
After all, it is the hour for her hair.
Acolytes approach, carrying combs and oils
Flecked with gold, over the scattering boys.
Perform appreciation:
Nod to orchestrated
Pampering, massage. . . She loves fingers, lathered,
Cradling in foam her brain, her infinity.
Let those around her change. Another birth meant nothing
To her body, her sullen pleasure stepping from a bath.
She turns her mirror, as an encore, on her thighs.
Her oldest aims —
Babies make
Their mothers laugh—an arrow at her. Executed laugh.
The others settle at her feet. Grin, alas.
Inadequate accomplices. Poor accessories.
When he drops his arrow, approaches — Too old for this,
She sighs, accepts one kiss, wetting his brow with kisses
Young wine.
She dribbles wine
On his testicles, soothes her favorite son, his folded skin.
She holds him, holds the knife, and brings it through him. Wine,
More wine, is dabbed on the throbbing, and his tongue,
Crouched and dry in the pink-dark. . . She loves his silence,
Holy as the stained grass and the pollinated air.
The winged ones scream
In ignorance.
She leans, like a horse rearing, over him,
And nurses him, worships his amnesia.
He is adorable in the morning, when horizontal yellows
Stretch and disappear in cinnabar, in blood
That colors acres, warm across the ancient field.
Tomorrow charms.