EMBLEM A hand brandishes a heart-poked sword the other hand is afire. That's quite a situation you've gotten us in do you expect any way out? Let me nap on the cloud furniture. We'll scrape cloud off you before you're done this stratosphere's not for sleeping. But I like the brushwork. You may be asleep already in which case this is a poem. I hear applause from here and rattle as some put down their swords. I'll trade a hand of fire for an eye of fire. I'll give a fiver for a poem that lives in fire. In the name of all that burns what would that name be? My heart hurts can we take the sword out of it please? by Rodger Kamenetz A poem from DREAM LOGIC forthcoming from Presses Universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, 2020.

Rodger Kamenetz  is an award-winning author, poet, and teacher. His best-known book, The Jew in the Lotus, has been called a "revered text" by the New York Times and recounts the holy pilgrimage of rabbis to meet with the Dalai Lama. It became a PBS film of the same title first broadcast in 1999. Stalking Elijah (1997) won the National Jewish Book Award for Jewish Thought. The History of Last Night's Dream (2007) was featured on Oprah Winfrey's Soul Series. Burnt Books (2010), a dual biography of Franz Kafka and Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav, combines literature and religion in a hybrid text of fiction, biography, and memoir. Kamenetz's seven books of poetry include The Missing Jew and The Lowercase Jew. His most recent books of poetry are To Die Next To You (2013) and Yonder (2019). Kamenetz has degrees from Yale, Johns Hopkins, and Stanford and is a retired LSU Distinguished Professor and Sternberg Honors Chair Professor who focuses now on writing and helping others with Natural Dreamwork. You can link to his page here, http://rodgerkamenetz.com/biography.php