Marriage Scene – Sam Kerbel

September 16, 2025

Platinum Abraham huffs in the desert
Shepherding a hearse of hushed wagons
Toward the muni lot
Several miles from the altar.
Night begins to fall, stars flicker sheepishly
As the old father gathers garden light.
Sarah tenderly rubs Abe’s toes and heels
With the bread-like patience of a young nurse,
Years wound like yarn around her finger.
From the west, a butcher’s odor.
Had we lived in a world with no pyramids
To dream of, had skyscrapers bent to the lip
Of the knoll, you could imagine seeing anyone
Without paying for the privilege.
As it is, God likes his rituals.
God says nothing and Abraham listens.
God shows him pictures of his youth
Before the jungle-bed caught fire
His parents, whose faces he’d forgotten,
His brothers, sisters, cousins, friends,
An Abraham unknown to Abraham.
In his case, what’s in a name is yet another name.
Sarah grabs him by the hair and throat
Chanting hosannas and twilight curses
As honey drips from a saucer onto the rug,
The sheep run mute.
A madman from the hillsides breaks in
And offers himself in his place
But Sarah merely pries away the knife
And hands it to her husband, shorter than she,
Staring down at the sunspots mottling his head
With hues of the old country, hues of middle age.
Sarah cries, what do you hold of me? Abraham
Recalls the story of their first date.
Same words, same cadence, as many times.
So what if Abraham liked his stories,
There is no thing out there, he thought
He heard God say. But what do you hold
Of me she asks again, brandishing the knife
At Abraham’s hip. He waits like a lamb
Twirling on a spit. If you die with me
He said, you’re already dead.