Long awaited follow-up to The Babies! $14.00 Paper, 978-0-9818591-2-5 2009 • 80 pp. 6 x 8" Sabrina Orah Mark follows up her critically acclaimed debut, The Babies, winner of the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize in 2004 chosen by Jane Miller, with a second collection of prose, Tsim Tsum, centered on two characters, Walter B. and Beatrice, first introduced in The Babies. Unbeknownst to them they have come into being under the laws of Tsim Tsum, a Kabbalistic claim that a being cannot become, or come into existence, unless the creator of that being departs from that being. Along their journey they encounter many beguiling characters including The Healer, The Collector, Walter B.’s Extraordinary Cousin, and the Oldest Animal. These figures bewilder and dislodge what is at the heart of the immigrant experience: survival, testimony, and belonging. 
•Reviews• •Excerpt• •About the Author•
Reviews: "Sabrina Orah Mark's Tsim Tsum is like a collection of episodes from a lost, slightly sinister children's book on the nature of love and time, in which wry parables move us further and further down unknown hallways, beyond instruction, into corridors of dream-sense, far into the strange, cool territory of the fabulous."
—Mark Doty
"Truly original and creative story telling."
—Midwest Book Review
"Desi and Lucy, Punch and Judy, the sun and the moon, your relatives, you, Kafka’s great-grand-niece and her long-suffering spouse all come alive in the quarrelsome, repeatedly mortal, resurrected, affectionate duo of Beatrice and Walter B., who speak, act, and think their way through Mark’s vexing, funny and terrifying prose poems, driven by incongruity, irony and dialogue, with assists and interruptions from the Oldest Animal in the World. “‘If by housekeeping you mean time travel, then yes, I am doing some housekeeping.’ ‘Can I do some too?’ asked Walter B.’” Can we? You'll remember what Mark has done with the prose poem: you'll wonder how on Earth she does it, too."
—Stephen Burt
Tsim Tsum offers glimpses of the weird, beautiful world of the indoor carnival, a great-aunt’s chipped music box, those lacey vintage undergarments that no one can say for sure whether they are on right-side-up or not (I suspect that Beatrice would insist that there is no right-side…).
—Daniela Olszewska, H_ngm_n
The Departure “You do not know anymore,” sighed Walter B., “what is real.” “Goodbye,” said Beatrice. “Goodbye,” said Walter B. “Goodbye,” said Beatrice. “Goodbye,” said Walter B. “Where will you go?” asked Beatrice. “To the banquet,” said Walter B. Beatrice stared at him. She wished he would break like the sky once did and drown her in flowers. “Weren’t we once,” asked Beatrice softly, “a little like a banquet?” “You do not know anymore,” sighed Walter B., “what is real.” Walter B. and Beatrice stood in the dark. They held hands and watched the wagons pass by. Walter B. was not in any of them. “Goodbye,” said Beatrice. “Goodbye,” said Walter B. “Goodbye,” said Beatrice. “Goodbye,” said Walter B. “Where will you go?” asked Beatrice. “To the banquet,” said Walter B. Behind them the horses were slowly gathering in the frozen field. “Weren’t we once,” asked Beatrice softly, “a little like a banquet?” “You do not know anymore,” sighed Walter B., “what is real.” “Goodbye,” said Beatrice. “Goodbye,” said Walter B. “Goodbye,” said Beatrice. “Goodbye,” said Walter B. “Where will you go?” asked Beatrice. “To the banquet,” said Walter B. Walter B. and Beatrice stood in the dark. They held hands and watched the wagons pass by. Walter B. was not in any of them. “Goodbye,” said Beatrice. “Goodbye,” said Walter B. “Goodbye,” said Beatrice. “Goodbye,” said Walter B.
Sabrina Orah Mark has received fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Glenn Schaeffer Foundation, and The National Endowment for the Arts. Her poetry has appeared in many journals and in the anthologies, Legitimate Dangers and The Best American Poetry 2007.
