My Poison Tree




My Poison Tree

By Sharon Portnoff

Sharon Portnoff holds the Elie Wiesel Chair in Judaic Studies and is associate professor of religious studies at Connecticut College. Her poems have appeared in Midstream, the Wallace Stevens Journal, the Poetry Porch <http://​poetryporch.​com>, and in the collection Rumba under Fire: The Arts of Survival from West Point to Delhi, ed. Irina Dumitrescu (Punctum, 2016). Poems are forthcoming in Free Inquiry and Moment.




The sun invited my attention

My neighbors shaded me

Protected me

But I would out



Alas my trunk was hugged

By my enemy

My sprig thoughtlessly

Dropped



Now sprouted to a tree

I strove for the light

Far out I reached

But topped



Unable now to reach

The height