Poem // 3AM Nign

3AM Nign she sang as if looking through the magnifying glass lullaby’s every heave, a thesis on slowing down, peeling – each note, a pit assessing its fullness lullaby’s underside, hymn to darkness (sleep no longer a goal but a side-effect) of the dream’s reaffirmed primacy two silences on each side of her amplifying the song’s timing – family of three,  thickening liquid poured in and out of the bedroom’s cup Jake Marmer’s first poetry collection Jazz Talmud was published in 2012.

Continue reading

Seder plate

The Google Seder

The e-mail invitation came at the last minute. Not that Google didn’t know Passover was on its way, but apparently it would have been un-Google-like to plan too far in advance. So the message arrived just a few days ahead of the special evening: “I would like to formally announce this year’s Google seder, affectionately known as Koogle@Google 2008.” “Google? seder? Google seder?” you might ask. Not many companies (I can’t think of any others) have an official corporate seder. We’re not talking a Hanukkah or Christmas party but a full-fledged Exodus commemorative night at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, a few miles south of Palo Alto, in the heart of Silicon Valley. It was my first visit to the sprawling campus of the Internet search giant, founded in 1998 in a Menlo Park garage by...

Continue reading