by Josh Jacobs

On the sixth night the hospital chaplain
appeared in my dad’s room.
She wore scrubs and a metal Star of David
ready like a little pry bar in case
he wanted her to examine his soul.

My dad’s bile and other secrets
were flowing through tubes in his nose,
the lines drawn up from his head
to a container above each side of the bed
like a sketch of a family tree
with him as the favored son.

She didn’t know that God
lived downstairs from my dad growing up,
a door never to be knocked on Halloween,
the mute keyhole breathing in
his brother’s death at two, exhaling
nothing in the silent years that followed,
my dad leaving at sixteen
with a desperate confidence
clutched like a briefcase,
his soul to be found anywhere
but in that old building.

Josh Jacobs works at MIT and lives outside of Boston. He won the 2023 Common Ground Review Poetry Prize, selected by Oliver de la Paz, and was a participant in the 2024 Yetzirah Jewish Poetry Conference. His work has also appeared in Cider Press Review, Pangyrus, Right Hand Pointing, and Verklempt.