Current
Issue
Volume 12.1
Kara Lewis
—
Noam Chomsky Isn’t Dead Yet
He didn’t die on the night of your cousin’s wedding, but the story ran in the AP while you were
filling coolers with ice and I sat sipping Pinot Grigio with your mom. There won’t be any wine
there, she said as she emptied the bottle and gulped the last drop from its tilted neck. Noam
Chomsky’s wife confirmed he hadn’t died. I imagined her memorizing the vise of his hands
before they fell open and slack.
When you came back, you pressed your palms to my cheeks in the 94-degree heat. Someday, I
might be the one who knew best if you were dead or not, the same way I knew you’d packed a
button-down blooming with blue flowers. That you called it brave because you usually wore
T-shirts scrawled with DATA SCIENCE or JEWS AGAINST GENOCIDE. When your aunt shouted
about Israel at shabbos, I knew to intertwine my fingers with yours and tug you toward the back
porch. The screen door clattered like a border.
In my high school journalism class, I wrote my own obituary. In my fake and finite life, I’d
married my boyfriend at the time. I read his full name in front of the class. I hadn’t tasted wine
so I didn’t know how much you miss it when you can no longer have it. Now I knew not to use
constructions like survived by. The preposition connecting me to someone could be struck
unceremoniously with an editor’s pen. The ketubah read, We intend to be with each other for
the rest of our lives. Then, three lines down, If we decide to separate, we’ll amicably split our
assets and our children.
When I looked at your parents sitting across the table I could picture you cleanly cleaved in two.
The slope of your nose was your father’s. Your curls springing like helixes of DNA belong to your
mother. Your height entirely your own, as mysterious as how the rabbi described love. How did it
grow or stop growing?
We both ate the lemons from the rims of our water and your dad said we were made for each
other. You held the rind like a smile. Noam Chomsky says babies are born with an innate sense
of language. As an only child, you grew up around your parents and their friends. You stood in
front of the fridge shoveling in garnishes meant for cocktails. Holding in your sentences and
learning to listen.
Maybe that’s why I find myself telling you, I’m really afraid of death because I don’t know what
happens after. I’m really afraid of the cuts that come from broken glass, of crying out in pain
when everyone else exclaims congratulations. Of holding on to your hand if strangers say you’re
already gone.
When you went down on me with your relatives in the next room, I stifled my pleasure but my
legs seized like I might have been dying. You asked me how good it felt on a scale of 1 to 10. How
dead was Noam Chomsky on a scale of 1 to 10? The Jacobin pointed out that he was 95 years old,
of course he was going to die. And not later, but sooner. While I answered, he ticked half a
decimal closer.
Kara Lewis is a poet and editor based in Minneapolis and Kansas City. Her work has appeared in New Letters, The Pinch, Permafrost, Rogue Agent, Map Literary, Poetry South, and elsewhere. Her poems have received three Best of the Net nominations.
