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Abba, Father, First Flicker

Posted by Elly Katz | Feb 1, 2025 | Poetry | 0 |

Abba, Father, First Flicker

We’re cut loose 
in a loss
& lost to what we bind
what we’re bound by: 
goldenrods & hues of dirt, dad’s prayer shawl 
enumerating its threads & our hours
night’s goodbyes & lies, blemishes in the sky.
We’re feathers failing to fall
falling to scratch it out, to re-catch 
that first latch in the mouth 
Abba:
broad-shouldered bellow of a knight at night
silver tufts wooly with what was.
Day asks to ask again
what can be said in the end 
of all our saying 
but a brief but 
bends the air 
to bewail but 
Abba: 
worded like a fist 
in the suckling mouth
mouthful of milk
mouthful of mourning 
mouthful of death 
mouthful of dad’s prayers.
It’s all the same 
lit dark 
white reflections of what binds
what we’re bound by.
To light one thing 
is to burn another.

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About The Author

Elly Katz

Elly Katz

At 27, verging towards a doctorate at Harvard, Elly Katz went for a mundane procedure to stabilize her neck. Somehow, she survived what doctors surmised was unsurvivable: a brainstem stroke secondary to a physician’s needle misplacement. In the wake of the tragedy, she discovered the power of dictation and the bounty of metaphor. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in the Stardust Review, the Sacramento Literary Review, the Amsterdam Review, and many others. Her first collection of creative nonfiction, From Scientist to Stroke Survivor: Life Redacted is forthcoming from Lived Places Publishing in Disability Studies (2025). Her first collection of poetry, Instructions for Selling-Off Grief, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books (2025).

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The Braided Way is a framework to see every faith tradition as a strand, braided into a larger whole of spiritual awareness. In the Braided Way, combining spiritual practice from various faiths allow us to explore sacred experience and wonder in forms that resonate with our personal spiritual needs and sacred intuitions. In today’s culture, many people shun religious dogma, but yearn for spiritual connection. The Braided Way allows the ceremonies and practices of multiple faiths to be available without the confinements of cultural dogma.

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