Matthew Lippman

THE ARC IS THE WORD AND THE WORD IS THE ARC

I am off to get a small chicken parm hero at A and N Pizza 
because I read Jessica Jacobs’ poem about Noah. 

In the poem Noah did not build an arc, he built a word
the way the arc is the word and the word is the arc. 

The word for arc in Hebrew is tayva. 
Apparently, it’s also the word for word. 

Hebrew is a beautiful confusion like that 
and I am off to eat a non-kosher sandwich on Shabbat. 

That’s the sabbath, the holy day, Shabbos. 
Shabbat in Hebrew means rest. 

I will eat my meat and cheese sandwich and recline. 
I will call myself Noah and build a word out of my imagination and call it rest.

Jessica Jacobs’ poem “Collective Nouns” is the first poem in a section of her book called Rest.
What are all the nouns you would collect 

so you could sit in repose? For me, today, Noah would be the first one. 
Water would be the second. The third would be a chicken parm hero. 

I think Jessica Jacobs’ poems are heroes, 
they save the world and if the great flood came 

you could fashion them all together, stitch them together with guitar strings and bamboo, 
the minerals from broken stars and some twine and make an arc. 

Once you were on that arc, you could put your feet up 
and let the sun dance on your face 

while you inhaled any kind of sandwich that would make you happy
regardless of the religious rules.

And Jessica would be Noah. Up there in the captain’s hut, 
steering the vessel through the rough waves 

and I swear to all the ministers and mothers of faith--when the water disappeared 
your whole body would be renewed, in a state of renewal, like the earth, rested

the way rest is going out to the curb every day,
and picking up nouns, collecting words

for a collection of words 
that you can then hand out to anyone who needs when in need.

Here, take this cup, this orange, this field, garden, home, mountain, sandwich.
Here, goddamn, take this love.

Matthew Lippman’s collection Mesmerizingly Sadly Beautiful (2020) is published by Four Way Books. It was the recipient of the 2018 Levis Prize. He is the author of 5 other poetry collections.